The meeting took the form of a Panel Discussion, chaired by Mr D. O. Forfar. Before the meeting he prepared a short paper on topics for discussion, and this is summarised here.

This paper reviews the developments in reporting of traditional embedded value and summarises some of the reasons why this is now undergoing change. It considers the purpose of an embedded value calculation and the effect of differing attitudes to risk. It comments on the recently developed European Embedded Value Principles and sets out the main areas where scope remains to apply judgement.

The paper proposes the market-consistent embedded value framework as a way forward to help provide guidance in some of these areas, in particular on the choice of discount rate and on calibration of stochastic techniques used to value embedded options and guarantees. The paper recognises that market-consistent embedded values are in relative infancy and sets out areas for possible future development.

The text of this paper, together with the abstract of the discussion held by the Institute of Actuaries on 25 October 2004, are printed in British Actuarial Journal, 11, I, 63-131.

The modelling of extreme events is becoming of increased importance to actuaries. This paper outlines the various theories. It outlines the consistent theory underlying many of the differing approaches and gives examples of the analysis of models. A review of non-standard extreme events is given, and issues of public policy are outlined.