The National Association of Insurance Commissions Life Actuarial Task Force has charged the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA) Life Experience Sub-Committee to develop mortality and persistency experience tables and mortality valuation tables for guaranteed issue and simplified issue life insurance products. Therefore, the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and AAA Joint Project Oversight Group, through its Guaranteed Issue / Simplified Issue Experience Committee, is soliciting information on guaranteed issue, simplified issue and pre-need policies in this 2005-2009 data call.

By contributing to this current data call, you will support the SOA's work to start collecting guaranteed issue, simplified issue and pre-need mortality and persistency data to support a new experience study and valuation table(s). If your company does not have data for each of the five years in this data call, please contribute for the years in which data is available. To meet the required deadlines, companies need to contribute their data by July 31, 2011.

Study participants will receive:

• A confidential report of their company's mortality experience in Excel pivot tables.
• The 2005-09 Guaranteed Issue/Simplified Issue study.

A guaranteed policy is defined as a policy or certificate where the applicant must be accepted for coverage if the applicant is eligible and the premium is paid. Exceptions for not allowing coverage including ineligibility due to issue age ranges or lack of membership in the eligible group (e.g., association group) will not disqualify the policy or certificate from being considered guaranteed. If any of the following risk selection criteria are required, then the coverage should not be considered guaranteed:

• Actively at work requirement.
• Acceptance based on any health related questions or information.
• Waiving of underwriting requirements based on minimum participation thresholds (worksite).

A pre-need insurance policy is any life insurance policy or certificate that is issued in combination with, in support of, with an assignment to, or as a guarantee for a prearrangement agreement for goods and services to be provided at the time and immediately following the death of the insured.

The following products are not to be included in the data call:

• Nonmedical band of a fully underwritten product;
• Routinely required paramedical examinations;
• Routinely collected bodily fluids; (include products with agent-collected oral fluid or urine);
• COLI/BOLI products;
• Credit insurance products;
• "Group" products other than affinity groups solicited by mass marketing;
• Juvenile-only products (e.g., under age 16); and
• Annuity products.

The data should be submitted to MIB in files containing the observation year of the data in the filename. The files may be sent to MIB using a variety of methods. For details on the submission methods, see the Technical FAQ.

The data format requires the entry of your company's plan code for each policy. Also, send a translation table of your plan codes for use in understanding these codes.

The attached zip file contains the three (3) data request documents: the data format which covers guaranteed issue, simplified issue, and pre-need policies; coding instructions to help filling out the submission; and an FAQ to answer technical questions on submitting the data.

MIB helped develop the original standards for actuarial experience studies, and has been producing top-quality studies in conjunction with the Society of Actuaries for over 25 years. In a secure environment, with utmost confidentiality, MIB has handled some of the industry's largest statistical research projects.

If you have any questions regarding the study, please contact MIB's Senior Data Coordinator, Jan Palmbach, jpalmbach@mib.com, 781.751.6128.

If you have any questions, please contact Cindy MacDonald, SOA Senior Experience Studies Actuary, at cmacdonald@soa.org or 847.706.3559.

Sincerely,
Mary J. Bahna-Nolan, FSA, CERA, MAAA
Chair, AAA Life Experience Sub-Committee and
Guaranteed Issue/Simplified Issue Experience Committee