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Individual Life - Mortality Experience Studies

The SOA offers experience studies and table reports on individual life, with a focus on mortality, for use by actuaries. Studies often contain many files for download, including multiple ZIP files, PDFs and Excel files. Table reports are often accompanied by Excel workbooks with complimentary materials.

Valuation reports, such as the 2015 VBT, can be found here.

2024

  • A Predictive Analytics Framework
    November
    This project provides actuaries with a reusable toolset for experience analysis. It includes workflow, code, and a GitHub repository for experimentation and adaptation to individual data sources.
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  • 2012-2019 Individual Life Insurance Mortality Experience Report
    October
    This report evaluates mortality experience of the years 2012-2019 relative to standard industry mortality tables at a broad level and observes general trends in mortality experience by key policy characteristics.
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  • Individual Life Insurance Mortality Improvement Scale – for Use with AG38/VM20 – 2024
    September
    The Mortality Improvement Life Working Group of the SOA Research Institute’s Mortality and Longevity Oversight Advisory Council 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. This recommendation has been adopted by the NAIC’s Life Actuarial Task Force.
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  • Experience Studies Pro - 2015-21 Universal Life Premium Persistency Study
    July
    The SOA Research Institute and LIMRA present comprehensive industry experience data — providing vital tools for product development, pricing, and assumption-setting work.
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  • US Individual Life Mortality Improvement Models and Analysis Tools
    May
    The purpose of this study is to present a methodology for estimating mortality improvement factors based on data from insured lives. This study is not meant to produce a proposed set of mortality improvement factors for any specific purpose; rather, actuaries can use this study as a starting point for their work on mortality improvement and add further refinements as they see fit.

2023

  • 2023 Cause of Death Report, Fourth Quarter, 2022
  • December
  • LIMRA, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute, and TAI have collaborated on an ongoing effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience and share the emerging results with the insurance industry and the public. This report contains the results of a cause of death analysis focused on how the rates of death for various causes were impacted throughout the pandemic period through the fourth quarter of 2022.
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  • U.S. Individual Life COVID-19 Reported Claims Analysis, through June 30, 2023 Update
    November
    LIMRA, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute, and TAI have collaborated on an ongoing effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience and share the emerging results with the insurance industry and the public. This report documents a high-level analysis of the claims that have been reported through June 30, 2023. The results presented here are based on data from 28 companies representing approximately 69% of the individual life insurance in force for the experience period of the study.
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  • U.S. Individual Life COVID-19 Mortality Experience Study, through December 31, 2022 Update
    October
    This report is presented in the form of a Tableau dashboard and is the latest public release from this report series and contains the results of an excess mortality analysis for the fourth quarter of 2022. Data from 29 companies representing approximately 69% of the industry’s face amount in force were included in the analyses in this report. A total of 3.2 million death claims from individual life policies from 2015 through December 31, 2022, make up the basis of the analyses. The report also compares the experience under COVID-19 of the insured population versus the general population.
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  • U.S. Individual Life Mortality Quintile Analysis
  • September
  • This study was developed by the Mortality Quintile Analysis subgroup (Subgroup) of the SOA Individual Life Experience Committee (ILEC). The purpose of this study is to quantify the range of intercompany variability in mortality.

2022

  • 2022 Cause of Death Report, Fourth Quarter, 2021 Update
    December
    LIMRA, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute, and TAI have collaborated on an ongoing effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience and share the emerging results with the insurance industry and the public. This report is the eleventh public release from this collaboration and contains the results of a cause of death analysis focused on how the rates of death for various causes were impacted throughout the pandemic period through the fourth quarter of 2021.
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  • Old Age Mortality Experience Study Report
    October
    The Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute released a report that examines older age mortality (OAM) with a focus on attained ages 70 and above. The report helps determine whether refinements were needed in the 2015 Valuation Basic Tables. Analysis was performed by sex, issue age and attained age, issue year cohorts, smoking risk classification, benefit band, select vs ultimate period, and interactions.
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  • 2022 Cause of Death Report, Third Quarter, 2021 Update
    August 2022
    LIMRA, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute, and TAI have collaborated on an ongoing effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience and share the emerging results with the insurance industry and the public. This report is the tenth public release from this collaboration and contains the results of a cause of death analysis focused on how the rates of death for various causes were impacted throughout the pandemic period through the third quarter of 2021.
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  • Individual Life Waiver of Premium Experience Study
    May
    This study follows a survey that was undertaken by the Society of Actuaries in 2018 on ILWOP reserving and pricing methods. Based on the interest expressed by participants taking the survey, the SOA Research Institute commissioned this report to collect data and analyze the experience in the form of an Actual to Expected study.
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  • 2022 Cause of Death Report
    March
    LIMRA, Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute, and TAI have collaborated on an ongoing effort to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the individual life insurance industry’s mortality experience and share the emerging results with the insurance industry and the public. This report is the fifth public release from this collaboration and contains the results of a cause of death analysis focused on how the rates of death for various causes were impacted throughout the pandemic period through the first quarter of 2021.
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  • Process to Determine if a VBT Update is Required
    March
    The VBT Analysis Subgroup of the Joint Academy Life Experience Committee and SOA Preferred Mortality Oversight Group recommends the approach documented in this report for determining when there is sufficient change in the emerging actual mortality experience relative to the current VBT to warrant changes to the table.

2021

  • 2017 Individual Life Insurance Mortality Experience Report
    December
    This report evaluates recent mortality experience relative to standard industry mortality tables at a broad level and observes general trends in mortality experience by key policy characteristics. Where possible, insights into the industry changes contributing to the observed trends are provided. The underlying data is in spreadsheet pivot table format for further investigation by qualified actuaries. Provided data also is in a delimited text file and Tableau dashboards for use with other software tools.

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  • U.S. Post-Level Term Lapse and Mortality Predictive Modeling
    November
    This report provides an educational background on the process of building predictive models, as well as a detailed presentation of the model results. Predictive models provide a method to capture variation by multiple variables and understand the relationship between these variables. This allows for a deeper understanding of key variables than is possible under a traditional approach.
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  • U.S. Post-Level Term Lapse and Mortality Experience Report
    May
    Term Life insurance is a popular product in the U.S. As a growing number of policyholders have been reaching the end of the level term period, the SOA has been committed to studying policyholder behavior in the post-level term (PLT). Shock lapse, post-level term lapse and mortality have previously been analyzed in SOA PLT studies conducted in 2010 and 2014. This study provides an update of experience and some valuable new insights.
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  • 2009-2016 Individual Life Insurance Mortality Experience Report
    April
    The Individual Life Experience Committee has completed their latest report on intercompany mortality experience by amount of insurance under standard individually underwritten issues. This includes study years 2009-2016.

2020

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Other Resources

International Experience Study

Mortality and Morbidity Liaison Committee Reports

Related Links