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: An increasingly popular tool in estate planning is the Joint Life policy payable upon the second death. The design and pricing of this policy is influenced significantly by cash value and reserve requirements. This article discusses two methods for calculating these values.

Description: This is a discussion of the paper, A General Method of Calculating Experience Net Extra Premiums Based on the Standard Net Amount at Risk by Walter Shur.

Description: The aim of this paper is to examine relationships, analogous to that of premiums and reserves, for the case of a general insurance with benefits payable in respect to several forms of decrement. Specifically, this paper presents a system of splitting the total premiums and reserves into components related to the different benefits, with formulas distinguished between dependent and independent relationships between premium and reserve components. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: Discusses the use of allocated and marginal expenses in pricing life insurance products.

Description: Feature article describing how the Society of Actuaries (SOA) partnered with the Association of Home Office Underwriters (AHOU) and the Canadian Institute of Underwriters to conduct research focused on new medical tests and markers that may have significance and relevance to the life insurance markets to get a sense of where underwriting practices are going in the future.

Description: In this paper a model of term insurance experience is constructed on the basis of mortality classes theory and utility theory. The model generates a complete set of mortality, withdrawal, and conversion rates on term insurance and of mortality rates on converted policies . The resulting decrement rates can be used in a Jenkins-type formula to calculate gross premiums.

Description: This report documents the “Constructing Occupational -Specific Life Tables for China” project under the “China Research Topics” proposal.

Description: This article presents a fable about the issues that arise between marketers and actuaries in the product development process.