Description: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a new approximation to determine contingency reserves against adverse mortality experience for a portfolio of life annuity contracts.

Description: This paper attempts to broaden the actuary's understanding of decrement rate estimation and to clear up some of the more common misconceptions which have been promoted.

Description: This paper presents simple Bayesian graduation models that substantially ease the prior elicitation burden, and also describes a Monte Carlo integration approach that greatly reduces the computational load.

Description: Presents a theoretical basis for a computerized methodology for estimating biological age - a measure of time to death.

Description: This paper discusses a class of asymmetric distributions arising in a random summation scheme. Members of the class are called asymmetric Laplace distributions as the standard Laplace distributions, which are symmetric, constitute a proper subclass. Among distributions which are limits in random summation schemes, asymmetric Laplace distributions play an analogous role to that of normal distributions among distributional limits of non-random sums. Asymmetric LaPlace laws are more 'peaky' and have heavier tails than normal laws. They have stability properties and are convenient in applications, as their densities have explicit forms and estimation procedures are easily implemented. Anticipating increasing interest in this class of distributions, the authors present statistical tools which can be utilized in practice, including algorithms for simulation and estimation. They also discuss more general classes of distributions, where asymmetric Laplace distributions appear as special cases.

Description: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a practical method for interpolation and smoothing and give a number of numerical examples using the method. The method is a variation of the Whittaker-Henderson method. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: This paper will investigate the problem in estimating mortality rates using data obtained from insurance company records.

Description: This note describes a mortality investigation procedure in which the expected mortality applicable to each new policy for a period of about three years after issue is estimated by use of persistency factors. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: In this paper, methods are presented that allow the systematic graduation of multidimensional data subject to linear constraints. With these constraints the practitioner can impose limitations on the graduation that agree with prior knowledge. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: The method in this paper is to derive expressions for mortality between integral values of age underlying the typical approximations employed, and to compare such expressions. Annuity and life reserve formulas are compared. Discussions of the paper are included.