Description: This is a discussion of the title paper by Raymond F. Houseman, which provides some practical aspects of various funding methods. The paper is critiqued, and some alternative methods are discussed.

Description: This paper describes current approaches for determining an actuarial appraisal value of a life insurance company, proposes a new approach for a more appropriate actuarial valuation and examines the differences between the twor methods. A discussion of the paper follows. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1978, Vol. 30.

Description: The excess spread approach introduced in this paper addresses the true economic profitability of investment oriented products by looking at the spread between the earnings rate on the assets and the rate required to be earned on the assets to satisfy the liabilities. For many products, an important part of the liability cost is the value of interest rate options embedded in the policies. The excess spread approach incorporates an option-pricing technique that is sufficiently flexible to handle different interest rate environments.

Description: Various methods of accounting for a block of in-force business acquired at the time of purchase have been proposed and used. This paper describes nine such methods, analyzing each by the use of a very simple model office. Followed by submitted discussions of the article

Description: An extension of a paper published in the 1952 Transactions by the same author, describing and classifying various funding methods for defined benefit pension plans. Followed by discussion papers submitted by several authors.

Description: This paper by John Mereu describes a method for mathematically computing the expected loss under a group life contract in excess of a stated limit. The paper also shows how to compute the variance and standard deviation of the stop-loss claim and suggests how the method can be extended to group insurance benefits where the claim amount per certificate is not fixed. Paper is followed by discussions from several people

Description: This discussion looks at problems encountered in putting new underwriting standards into effect, looks at trends in the current economic situation which are taken into consideration in underwriting the financial aspects of a risk, and the results of comparisons between the mortality experience under uninspected business with that under inspected business.

Description: This paper deals with credibility as applied to group insurance, where the problem is to estimate the future claim rate of a group as a function of both its own past claim rate and the average claim rate observed for similar groups.

Description: Discussion of the sensitivity of GAAP reserves to certain assumptions made and methodologies used. Followed by a discussion paper

Description: Software vendors participating in the A Comparative Analysis of Claims–Based Tools for Health Risk Assessment study were invited to submit comments on the study. In this document, MEDai comments on their contribution to the study's source data, and their results.