Individual Life Insurance Mortality Improvement Scale Recommendation – for Use with AG 38 and VM 20 - 2018

The Society of Actuaries’ Mortality Improvement Life Working Group has released a recommendation for a set of improvement factors that vary by gender and attained age to be used in conjunction with the 2008 Valuation Basic table or the 2015 Valuation Basic table for AG-38 purposes. Under ‘Related Links’, find the report that describes the proposed mortality improvement scale and its intended use and the spreadsheet that contains the final version of the mortality improvement rates for year-end 2018.

Applicability of Improvement Scale

The recommendation above represents the VBT development team’s view of reasonable mortality improvement factors for short-term projections and is not intended to be employed as a standard for longer-term projection periods.

Example application 

To determine the mortality rate for a male age 40 as of year-end 2018, use the improvement rate, 0.0092 (from cell B48 on the ‘Smoothed Scales’ tab of the Excel file below) and improve the qx for a male, age 40 for 3.5 years or qx*(1-0.0092)^3.5.

Materials

Mortality Improvement Scale Recommendation

Mortality Improvement Scale Recommendation Smoothed Rate (revised 12/2018, to add example on the ‘Smoothed Scales’ tab)

Questions Or Comments?

If you have comments or questions, please email research@soa.org.