Description: These were discussion papers on the paper, 'The Korean War Hazard' by James T. Phillips.

Description: The attached report presents the results of the survey conducted by the SOA Committee on Life Insurance Mortality and Underwriting Surveys on risk management practices of US life insurance companies. Both direct individual and group life insurance and reinsurance were included in the survey.

Description: Discussion of the mortality experience of the Korean War. The purpose of this paper to present some statistics and point out variations in the hazard that might that might be of value in setting up rules for the underwriting of military risks.

Description: This report, the second such report, presents the compilation of data received from life companies responding to a survey on preferred risk underwriting and provides opinions of the Task Force on Preferred Underwriting with respect to future trends.

Description: Discusses issues specific to large amount underwriting and the mortality outlook for current high face amount plans.

Description: The SOA Research Institute engaged Milliman to perform a study examining life insurer practices on accelerated underwriting and how COVID-19 has impacted them. This effort included a separate outreach to actuaries working for twelve different state insurance departments. At the time of this report, three responses to our regulatory survey had been received. Therefore, the results of the three-question survey are discussed in broad terms, rather than using numerical measurements.

Description: This report presents the results of the Survey on the Business Decision practices of direct companies conducted by the Society of Actuaries Committee on Life Insurance Mortality and Underwriting Surveys. A survey of reinsurers is reported separately.

Description: This report presents the results of a survey conducted in August and September of 2008 on foreign travel underwriting practices of direct writing companies.

Description: This report presents the results of a survey conducted by the Older Age Underwriting Practices Survey Subcommittee. The purpose of this survey was to elicit feedback regarding underwriting guidelines, requirements and practices utilized in the assessment of older age applicants.

Description: Consumer groups fear that the use of genetic testing information in insurance underwriting might lead to the creation of an underclass of individuals who cannot obtain insurance. Thus, these groups want to ban insurance companies from accessing genetic test results. Insurers contend that such a ban might lead to adverse selection that could threaten their financial solvency. To investigate the potential effect of adverse selection in a term life insurance market, a discrete-time, discrete-state, Markov chain is used to track the evolution of 12 closed cohorts of women, differentiated by family history of breast and ovarian cancer and age-at-issue of a 20-year annually renewable term life insurance policy. The insurance demand behavior of these women is tracked, incorporating elastic demand for insurance. During the 20-year period, women may get tested for BRCA 1/2 mutations. Each year, the insurer calculates profits/losses to date and expected future benefit payouts which determines the following year’s premium schedule. At the end of each policy year, women can change their life insurance benefit, influenced by their testing status and premium changes. Adverse selection could result from differentiated: 1. benefits following test results, 2. lapse rates according to test results, and 3. reactions to price increases. It is concluded that with realistic estimates of behavioral parameters, adverse selection should be a manageable problem for insurers. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 2004, Vol. 1.