Description: This presentation from Session 20PD of the SOA 1996 Orlando Annual Meeting examines the major trends in insurance laboratory testing from 1980 to 1985, with an emphasis on why blood testing thresholds were lowered dramatically in the mid-1980s and why those thresholds will persist into the next century. The value of liver function testing is examined as a case study in protective value. Issues addressed include: 1. What is the real impact of human immunodeficiency virus [HIV]-1 testing [sentinel effect]? 2. The unique pay-offs from liver function tests, 3. Clinical medicine mortality versus underwritten mortality: overcoming problems caused by different perspectives, and 4. Cotinine pays the freight? From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 22, No. 3.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. This session addresses the important elements in designing preferred risk products. Theoretical and pragmatic approaches to establishing a sound policy for setting underwriting requirements and mortality assumptions are discussed, including the real mathematics of preferred risk classification, distribution of risk profiles by age and the key elements of age-specific underwriting.

Description: The limited availability of life and protection cover for people living with certain serious health conditions is starting to become a critical issue for insurers. The public perception is that insurers simply don’t offer cover, or that it is difficult to source affordable, tailored cover. This article discusses the considerations when trying to improve access to insurance.

Description: In the wake of the pandemic, much of the insurance industry is now endeavoring to find sustainable, longer-term solutions among many forced innovations – and to ensure that temporary adaptations add value beyond mere change.

Description: This is a discussion from the June 2000 meeting of the Society of Actuaries in San Diego, looking at the evolution of e-commerce for the insurance business.

Description: This 1978 discussion focused on risk classification and privacy, including the following questions: What are the implications of the Privacy Study Commission's recommendations? What legislative developments have occurred? What can be expected? From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 4, No. 3.

Description: Panelists discuss recent trends in individual life mortality experience, especially for preferred risks, and the impact of agent selection and underwriting exceptions on a company's mortality results. From the 1997 Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 23, No. 3.

Description: Consumer groups fear that the use of genetic testing information in insurance underwriting might lead to the creation of an underclass of individuals who cannot obtain insurance. Thus, these groups want to ban insurance companies from accessing genetic test results. Insurers contend that such a ban might lead to adverse selection that could threaten their financial solvency. To investigate the potential effect of adverse selection in a term life insurance market, a discrete-time, discrete-state, Markov chain is used to track the evolution of 12 closed cohorts of women, differentiated by family history of breast and ovarian cancer and age-at-issue of a 20-year annually renewable term life insurance policy. The insurance demand behavior of these women is tracked, incorporating elastic demand for insurance. During the 20-year period, women may get tested for BRCA 1/2 mutations. Each year, the insurer calculates profits/losses to date and expected future benefit payouts which determines the following year’s premium schedule. At the end of each policy year, women can change their life insurance benefit, influenced by their testing status and premium changes. Adverse selection could result from differentiated: 1. benefits following test results, 2. lapse rates according to test results, and 3. reactions to price increases. It is concluded that with realistic estimates of behavioral parameters, adverse selection should be a manageable problem for insurers. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2004, Vol. 1.

Description: Presented at May 2002 Spring Meeting. Discusses selected concepts that relate to risk appraisal of new business insurance and underwriting. Specific attention is focused on the relative values of underwriting tools, namely fluid collection: blood, urine and oral fluid.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. Results of the recently completed survey on preferred risk criteria for individual ordinary life insurance are presented, with a discussion of limitations of results and implications for pricing actuaries, underwriters and reinsurers.