Description: The impact of the underlying mortality table selected as a basis for projecting mortality results

Description: In setting future mortality assumptions for pricing, the actuary needs to consider not only recent results and recent annualized mortality improvements, but also must look at the possible impact of possible shocks epidemics, wars, etc.

Description: A discussion of the need to search for alternative mortality tables other than the 1975- 80 and 1990-95 tables to use as the base table, which may be more appropriate for a particular company or specific products.

Description: This article gives examples of how an actuary can live by the actuarial motto of substituting facts for appearances. The specific examples given are setting the mortality for table shaved individual life business and setting late duration lapse assumptions for level term business.