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: The theory underlying the Moving Weighted Average graduation method is restated in the language of linear algebra which provides for an enrichment of the family of formulas. A comparison of the results of applying six members of the family to 100 simulated data sets is provided.

Description: This is a letter from Jan M. Hoem to Arnold F. Shapiro about Exposed-to-risk considerations based on the Balducci assumption and other assumptions in the analysis of mortality.

Description: The author discusses arguments for the appropriate methods for determining exposure and mortality rates, quoting the actuarial literature back to 1898. From ‘The Actuary’ Volume 15, No. 3.

Description: This article is a review and summary of the final volume in the series of Vital and Health Statistics Monographs initiated by the late Mortimer Spiegelman, FSA, in 1958. This final volume analyzes mortality and morbidity trends since the beginning of the century.

Description: This article investigates the simplicity of the Balducci hypothesis, and compares the fractional-age death probability given by three widely used assumptions: uniform distribution of deaths, the Balducci hypothesis, and constant force of mortality [1, 2].

Description: Article Board Of Governors by Bog in The Actuary, March 1979, Volume 13, Number 3

Description: A Discussion of why female mortality is higher than male mortality at higher ages.

Description: This paper is from Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1955 Volume 7, Number 17. The author notes that recent advances in calculating equipment make possible producing graduations much more elaborate than any done previously. The paper confines itself to the problem of graduating a single column of rates, such as an ultimate column, using a Whittaker-Henderson B graduation of the fourth order. The author provides a detailed description of the process with significant mathematical theory.

Description: Summary of the non-routine business transacted at meetings of the Executive Committee of the Society of Actuaries on Dec. 13, 1979 and the Board of Governors on Jan. 24, 1980