Description: The Society of Actuaries (SOA) and the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute are pleased to present the results of new research on the retirement market in China.

Description: The purpose of this note is to show how certain formulas of life contingencies can be derived almost painlessly under the uniform distribution of deaths assumption.

Description: This report was presented at the October 1982 Society of Actuaries annual Meeting in Washington D.C.. It presented supplementary information on the 1979 Build and Blood Pressure Study. This supplementary study was made to answer a number of specific questions raised by medical directors and actuaries of life insurance companies as well as by some prominent physicians and research scientists.

Description: Discussion of the separate and joint effects of obesity and diabetes on disability and mortality, and ways these effects can be used to improved insurance pricing and reserving, reverse the increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, and improve current projections of disability and mortality risks.

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: View the complete issue for the August 2014 Reinsurance News newsletter.

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 survey designed to get feedback on underwriting guidelines, requirements, assumptions and practices used in assessment of older age applicants.

Description: This report discusses drivers of U.S. mortality improvement for the short and long term.

Description: This article describes some of the drawbacks to the assessment of longevity risk adopted by most practitioners within the UK together with an initiative that provides a platform for an alternative approach that is both (a) more forward-looking in nature and (b) can complement current practices.