Description: The purpose of this paper was to examine the job and compensation of the ordinary life insurance agent in relation to commissions and expense regulation and to examine how well the industry responds to customer needs, and consider how the system might be changed. The paper establishes some criteria for evaluating appropriateness of systems of both agent compensation and expense regulation. The paper is followed by submitted discussion papers

Description: This 1978 session focused on persistency and agent retention. Questions addressed: 1. What are the current industry practices and experience with regard to the recruiting, training and retention of agents? 2. Are there ways of building the marketing system that can ease the cost impact of loss because of terminated agents? 3. To what extent are agents directed to markets that will allow them to survive ? 4. Are policy persistency studies valuable in helping general agents and managers identify poor markets? 5. Are persistency studies made that relate to the profile of the insured, in addition to relating to policy characteristics? 6. What uses are made of persistency data by agency to improve results? 7. How effective are persistency incentives in compensation plans for agents and home office field management?

Description: The New York Times last year published an article with the above title, on the job changes of American workers November 25, 1980. The writer relied on disparate studies by the National Bureau for Economic Research, the Personnel Journal, and the National Personnel Associates. The Times article tags the average worker as a “job jumper,” holding ten jobs during his or her career. Frequency of this jumping has been increasing average tenure is said to have declined from 4.6 years 1963 to 3.6 1980.

Description: The following topics were discussed at concurrent sessions: 1. Consequences of adjusted earnings, 2. The actuary's role in marketing, and 3. Pension legislation- United States. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1974 Vol. 26, Pt. 2D, No. 75AB.

Description: From the Record 1977 Vol. 3, No. 3, this presentation is from a concurrent session at the Society of Actuaries 1977 Regional Meeting, held in St. Louis June 16-17. In this presentation the panelists address life insurance company expenses. Analysis of expenses, including standards against which they are measured, and expense allocation are discussed. Inconsistencies in allocations for different purposes, e.g. statutory vs. GAAP, and pricing vs. financial reporting, as well as allocation of marketing expenses, are also discussed.

Description: The author describes a recent LIMRA study of agent terminations. The article describes the assumptions and methods used in the study, and provides a table comparing the results of this study, called the Brzezinski 1979 Agent Termination Tables, with agent termination rates derived from previous studies.

Description: This report presents a new set of select and ultimate expected individual life insurance lapse tables, based on inter-company experience of standard ordinary business between 1971-1972 policy anniversaries. Discussion includes overview of how the data was collected and how the tables were constructed and how they should be applied in practice.

Description: This paper addresses the need for obtaining further information about the differences in life insurance persistency or lapsation among companies during the first fifteen years from issue. It also introduces the statistical technique of cluster analysis From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1981, Vol. 33.

Description: This paper reviews the results of the LIMRA research project and presents the actual experience in general agent and managerial termination for disability, death, retirement and other causes for the 1956-73 period. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1978, Vol. 30.

Description: This 1979 session is about Individual and Group aspects of agent compensation. Questions addressed: 1. What have been the effects on agent compensation of: a. inflation. b. change in product mix. c. development of new products. d. servicing requirements for certain products. e. consumerism. f. changes in statute or regulation. 2. What are the future trends in agent compensation? 3. What studies have been made about agent compensation? 4. What statistics are available about agent compensation?