Description: This digest of special presentation by the Committee on New Recording Means and Computing Devices reviews progress in technology and describes the approach to an electronic operating system for Ordinary insurance. This discussion highlights and describes Punch Card Computer operation and Magnetic Tape computers.

Description: This paper is from Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1955 Volume 7, Number 17. The author notes that in mortality studies the ‘natural’ unit for exposures and deaths is number of lives, but often more insight is gained by use of other weights, such as face amount. In this paper, the author develops a method which, ‘by a combination of exposed to risk formulas, provides a comparatively simple procedure to permit consideration of weights which vary during the observation period.’

Description: This paper develops a general approach to actuarial calculations in applications that can be modeled as multi-state processes. Such situations arise when benefits are payable upon a change in the status of the insured or while the insured maintains a given status. From the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1994, Vol. 46.

Description: This paper presents the general notion of a periodogram, following Elphinstone's approach. The paper then goes on to examine symmetric linear operators and their periodograms in preparation for the end discussion of periodograms of graduators.

Description: Discusses a method to construct an endowment plan which provides for a maturity value greater than face by treating the paid up amount as the sum insured whenever it exceeds face. The formulas for premiums, cash values and amount of insurance are provided.

Description: Traditional pension cost methods are based on the actuarial present value of future benefits [which is a mean value]. As a consequence, these cost methods are deficient because they cannot provide plan sponsors with certain valuable information such as the probability that the accumulation of a particular sequence of contributions will ultimately provide sufficient funds to pay benefits, or the size of fund needed to ensure that retirees' lifetime benefits are paid with a specified probability. In response to these deficiencies, a new family of cost methods, called a-percentile cost methods, is developed. These cost methods are based on the probability of adequately covering all participants' benefits. Expressions for the normal cost, the accrued liability and the gain are provided. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1993, Vol. 45.

Description: In calculations involving the distribution of total claims in a risk theory setting, several authors have found it desirable to approximate a risk-theoretic distribution by use of the incomplete gamma function. A recent paper evaluated an excess loss ratio premium by use of a gamma distribution whose first and second moments agreed with those of the risk-theoretic loss distribution. A discussion of that paper pointed out that a translated gamma distribution allowed one to make the approximate distribution agree with the risk-theoretic distribution as far as the first three moments are concerned. The method presented in this paper allows one to make as many moments of the approximate distribution as desired agree with those of the risk-theoretic loss distribution. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1966, Vol. 18, Pt. 1, No. 52.

Description: This paper first discusses the history of the legislation of the joint and survivor benefits for the uniformed service personnel. It then goes on to address the specific actuarial assumptions made and the formulas developed for applying these assumptions for adaptability to the UNIVAC. This paper closes with specific programming procedures involved in using the UNIVAC.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to mathematical principles applicable to pension funding under dynamic conditions of population growth, inflation, and automatic adjustment of benefits. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1976, Vol. 28.

Description: In March this year a charter for the new corporation, the College Retirement Equities Fund, was granted by the State of New York and it is expected that within a few months the Fund will begin operations as a supplement to TIAA annuities. The purpose of this paper is to describe this rather novel type of corporation, which presents some unusual and interesting actuarial problems. Comparisons of the performance of fixed annuities vs. variable annuities are provided.