Description: Presented at 1983 Actuarial Research Conference. The goal is to estimate the form of distribution of T 'time to an event' given 'z', and to explore the relationship between T and z. The methods outlined can be generalized to problems involving multiple failure times - not restricted to death events.

Description: Excerpts from Yee's presentation on the S-Curve reserve for Universal life. The S-Curve represents a distribution of amount of assets needed under 550 scenarios which, together with future premiums, will fund all future policy benefits and expenses. The reserve is a specific point on the Curve.

Description: Several previous papers treat the rate of interest as a stochastic process in the determination of values of insurances and annuity functions. None of these papers consider the current interest rate as a starting point in the model. In this paper, autoregressive interest models, which are conditional upon current and past interest rates, are developed. It is shown how these models may be applied to the evaluation of moments of interest, insurance and annuity functions. Numerical results are also given.

Description: Series of letters discussing the controversial Gershenson formula for calculating exposures for mortality tables at the end of the observation period.

Description: First demonstrates that the choice of mortality basis in the pre-retirement period is immaterial for a defined benefit plan, valued on the Aggregate method, with a pre-retirement death benefit equal to the present value of the accrued pension. Second, presents comparisons of contribution costs for Aggregate vs. Unit Credit funding methods.

Description: The complex world of life insurance, historically the domain of those gifted in integral calculus and probabilistic and present value mathematics, is explored using Excel spreadsheets and the Solver macro. The cash flow approach to learning life insurance examines how the cash flows through an insurance company without using higher math.

Description: Small pension plans, are using Cost of Living Allowances 'COLA' in calculating benefits. This paper examines ways to handle COLA in valuations.

Description: The installment fractional premium scheme, although not practical for actual use, has some interesting theoretical properties. Jordan states, on page 88 of 'Life Contingencies', 'For example, if the insured dies after paying one quarterly premium for the current year, the three unpaid installments for the balance of the year are deducted from the policy proceeds.' This paper discusses the effects of adjusting the unpaid installments for interest.

Description: The motivation for various asset valuation methods and their properties are briefly described. Some smoothed value or market-related methods based on arithmetic averaging and exponential smoothing are considered and their effect on funding is discussed. Suggestions for further research are also made.

Description: The Karup-King formula with equal intervals has an elegant symmetric structure providing for efficient calculation. This paper traces the algebra involved in a generalization of this formula to the case of unequal intervals. So far, this formula does not have an elegant structure. However, a degree of elegance can be obtained in terms of matrix notation which can readily be used with a computer language such as APL.