Description: This paper investigates the use of models of dependent mortality for determining annuity values. We discuss a broad class of parametric models using a bivariate survivorship function called a copula. Using data from a large insurance company to illustrate our methods, we calculate maximum likelihood estimates to calibrate the rnodel.

Description: In 1993, the Chicago Board of Trade introduced a futures contract on a financial index that reflects the insurance claims emerging from catastrophes in a portfolio of policies. This article presents a valuation formula for the contract, under the assumption that catastrophes emerge as a Poisson process over time and that the claims from each catastrophe emerge as a Compound Poisson process. The formula is developed by taking conditional expectations with respect to a history of information that includes knowledge about the time of the catastrophes.

Description: A contingency table is a set of counts or frequencies obtained by classifying observations in two or more different ways. Log-linear analysis is applied to disability terminations, linking them to variables such as sex, age, region and maximum benefit period. Application to risk classification and underwriting are outlines.

Description: In Volume LXXV of the Proceedings there appeared a paper entitled Risk Loads for Insurers by Feldblum. Confidence intervals for the betas in TABLE 4 [Profit Margins and Their Standard Deviations by Line of Business] of this paper can be generated using the assumption of underlying normal distributions. However, bootstrapping operational or not for interval estimates does not require the normality assumption. The method of operational bootstrapping does not use random numbers. The method for the 4-dimensional case, used to generate the interval estimates in the current paper, is a natural generalization of the bivariate case. I use operational bootstrapping to generate interval estimates for Betas shown in the TABLE 5.

Description: All claim reserve systems endeavor to derive estimates of the unpaid portion of claims which have been incurred over a given period of time, making use of information on numbers of claims and amounts paid on claims as of the valuation date. In this paper, a claim reserve system is described. While the system does produce the traditional type of single-point estimates of claim reserves, it also provides the user with frequency distributions of claim reserves

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: This paper presents an approach to analyzing continuing care retirement community [CCRC] data, and demonstrates the methods using data from a large CCRC. It is assumed that residents make transitions among a number of states that represent the levels of care required by residents. There is randomness associated with both the transition times and the states entered at these times. The model is conveniently characterized in terms of transition intensity functions, which represent the instantaneous rates of transition between pairs of states.

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: This is a Fellowship Credit Research Paper. A portfolio of different insurance policies such as temporary, endowment and whole-life insurance policies is studied in a stochastic mortality and interest environment. The first two moments of the present value of the benefits of the portfolio are derived. The riskiness of the portfolio as measured by the variance of the present value of the benefits can be divided into an insurance risk and an investment risk in two different ways. One way leads to a more natural interpretation of the two risk components. A simple portfolio is used to illustrate the results.

Description: Group life insurance often represents an important component of the typical employee benefit package. The purpose of the present paper is to explore some aspects of different benefit schedules. In this paper, a method is suggested for analysing group life insurance benefit schedules with respect to certain criteria. The procedure is illustrated by means of simple numerical examples.