Description: This article discusses key excerpts from testimony in June and July 1981 by James R.Swenson, Chairman of the Academy’s Committee on Social Insurance, to the Senate Special Committee on Aging, and to the Senate Subcommittee on Social Security. The testimony recommended that the long term problems of Social Security be addressed at the same time as the short term imbalances, that benefits be adjusted to affordable levels e.g. gradual increase in retirement age, that more attention be paid to pessimistic actuarial projections, that the actuaries be given more latitude in selecting assumptions, and that the law be amended to require actuarial certifications for Social Security.

Description: This discussion on annuities and settlement options focuses on: A. Revisions made recently in the interest and mortality bases for annuity contracts and retirement income policies and for settlement options embodied in life insurance policies. B. The extent to which the use of settlement options might be justified for payees other than the insured and beneficiaries who are natural persons. C. The practical problems arising in connection with: 1 Requests for elaborate or complicated settlements 2 Liberal settlement option guarantees in outstanding policies

Description: This is a presidential address to the Society of Actuaries by Ernest J. Moorhead. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1970, Vol. 22, Pt. 1, No. 64.

Description: A description of the election process within the SOA, the role of the Board of Governors, and how the process has evolved from an on-the-spot balloting process to a mail-in process.

Description: This discussion at the SOA 1968 Philadephia and Los Angeles Regional Meetings covers premiuims and dividend determination methods for individual ordinary insurance, new product ideas such as nonsmoker policies, profit analysis methodologies, and methods for comparing products of different companies.

Description: This article is a brief review of the Society of Actuaries 1981 monograph ‘Adverse Deviation,’ by John C. Wooddy et. al. The author of this review notes that the monograph describes the approach - devised by the Committee on Theory of Risk - to ‘the problem of providing appropriately for the risks of adverse deviation in a GAAP valuation under the specifications of the ‘Audit Guide for Stock Life Insurance Companies.’

Description: This is an article about the education provided for actuaries highlighting a paper presented to the Institute in London in January 1982 by W. W. Truckle, F.I.A., Director of that body's Actuarial Tuition Service. Written to provide a framework for oral and written discussion, it features questions rather than opinions.

Description: Reviews Elmer R. Benedict's book entitled Protecting Retirement Against Inflation, which present a broad program for equitable sharing of the inflation burden. The kingpin is an income adjustment, utilizing income taxes, designed to restore the purchasing power of the retired, disabled and surviving spouses.

Description: “We all understand the statement that the probability of ruin for a young man's family is 1 in 1000. Most if not all would agree that he should insure against this risk. . . . ‘We all know why the risk is insurable even if we do not say so explicitly because there are a large number of broadly similar risks and the law of averages can he relied on. From The Actuary VOL. 16, No.8

Description: The author of this article, The Actuary’s editor, notes that this article is a capsule of what may be called “the Angle/Bladen theme.” John C. Angle spoke at Hartford in April 1980 see the Record for that meeting, pp. 188-193. His investment colleague, Ashby Bladen, addressed our Annual Meeting in Montreal last October 1980. Their observations were about mutual life insurance in the United States. The article notes that the current economic environment, with interest rates “far outside the familiar 3% to 6% range,” is a difficult one for life insurers and their traditional products, that we are becoming less conservative when the risk of serious economic trouble is rising, and “a satisfactory future depends on restoring stability, not upon trying to learn how to cope with instability.”