Description: There are three commonly used methods for compiling exposure and death data for use in obtaining crude mortality rates. They are lives, policies and amounts of insurance. This paper investigates the properties of estimators based on lives, amounts and robust alternatives. It is concluded that lives provide the best estimator, even when there is a moderate dependence of mortality rates on amounts of insurance. Presented at the Fourteenth Actuarial Research Conference, lowa City, lowa, September 6, 1979.

Description: Report on differences & similarities in mortality by age group, time, cause of death and region to aid in understanding of future expected mortality rates.

Description: Feature article discussing the development and use of stochastically generated mortality scenarios in VM-20.

Description: A recent Society of Actuaries study calculates safety and stability for current Long Term Care Insurance premiums.

Description: This study was undertaken to review pooled companies’ mortality experience on cases reported to the MIB with findings suggesting an increased probability of ethanol-related complications or hepatic dysfunction.

Description: The Lee and Carter LC method is getting widely adopted for long-run forecasts of age specific mortality rates. That popularity is first due to the model simplicity. Moreover, the LC model has given successful results for various countries e.g. U.S., Chile, G7 countries. However, some difficulties arose when using population data from certain countries such as UK and Australia. In the present paper, the LC model is applied to data from four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The Singular Value Decomposition SVD, the Weighted Least Square WLS and the Maximum Likelihood estimate MLE are used. These approaches give satisfactory results. The appropriate fitting period needs, however, to be well chosen. The properties of the model's parameters are studied using a bootstrap simulation.

Description: Recurrence relations arise naturally in life contingencies for 2 reasons - the aggregate law of mortality, which relates the distribution of the future life times of 2 insureds, if one of them and the other is that most life insurance products can be constructed as a portfolio of 2 basic product types. We use the above simple idea and the extra freedom provided by the fractional age distribution to reveal a structure behind some common recursions. The structure has obvious pedagogical value. More interestingly, a software based on it has been implemented which facilitates actuarial computing.

Description: In this paper we shall present our results in terms of the estimation of human mortality rates, but the results carry over to other applications. We shall discuss a Bayesian model that encompasses both graduation [smoothing] and prediction.

Description: The article talks about how Small Insurance Companies can make significant use out of experience studies, not to just to comply with PBR or other regulatory requirements, but also in managing their business.

Description: A follow-up to the first Preferred Class Structure Report, which contains the additional analysis of areas identified while preparing the first report of preferred class structure data from statistical agent submissions.