Description: discussion of risk management and proper pricing of life insurance products.

Description: Article describes the language changes between AG 49 and AG 49-A.

Description: This article discusses the importance, measurement and improvement of product development efficiency.

Description: A discussion of risk-relevant resources available at the Society of Actuaries Risk Management Task Force Web site

Description: Summary of a survey conducted by Milliman of 28life insurers on the impact of AG49 and AG49-A on their Indexed Universal Life products.

Description: The sentinel effect in the underwriting process refers to the tendency for unhealthy individuals to apply for insurance coverage where testing is not performed. The article reports on evidence of the effect with respect to cocaine and tobacco use and HIV positive prevalence

Description: Discusses insurance company considerations and approaches when dealing with the complexities of deferred lives within pension plans.

Description: This article explores implications for the future of improving the application of existing underwriting techniques and and taking maximum advantage of new technologies.

Description: Recent advances in mortality modeling have enabled applicant-specific quantification of mortality risk in life insurance applicants using laboratory and physical measurements. Relative to more conventional underwriting, this approach identifies a small population of significantly under-priced policy and a much larger, cross-subsidizing group whose risk is presently overestimated. Applicants placed in the highest percentile by this scoring methodology are more than 10X as likely to die in a given period as their demographic peers, and represent approximately 5% of short-term claims. Implications for product design are substantial in both the short- and long-term, as the possibilities for adverse selection grow, and the opportunity for fully individualized pricing raises the more distant prospect of products with as many rate classes as applicants.

Description: Tillinghast conducted a survey of mortality tables that life insurance companies used for pricing life products in 2001. One objective was to determine the underlying table being used, and the prospects of the 2001 CSO-related tables becoming a new basis for mortality measurement. This article summarizes some of the results.