Description: Actuarial science is at a cross roads. Many are urging that our highly successful examination process be partially abandoned in favour of accepting university courses in a number of basic subjects. This drive is based in part on the difficulties in supporting the present system, the experience elsewhere and a misplaced confidence in the quality of the university system. This paper explores where the university system is and where it needs to go in order to adequately serve the interests of the actuarial community.

Description: ['he purpose of this paper is to describe a possible Old-Age Social Security Program for Bangladesh, with financial projections through the year 2025.

Description: The purpose of the present paper is to discuss some of the methods by which fertility variations can be incorporated into population forecasts. From ARCH 1984, Vol. 1.

Description: Research paper describing past and future in Information Technology. Contents based on address given at the 16th Annual Actuarial Research Conference

Description: In today's atmosphere, the high returns available on bonds have attracted much investor interest, and it is only natural that fixed income investors look for ways to assure the maintenance of high returns on their bond portfolios. This paper explains how bond immunization offers that potential.

Description: This paper is a theoretical examination of the structure of the property-casualty insurance industry using economic theory to compare companies with agency distribution versus direct distribution. The purpose of the paper is to justify the existence of both types of distribution systems in equilibrium.

Description: This paper is the final report in a project commissioned by the Society of Actuaries Social Security Committee. The paper considers a variety of possible risk classification factors that could be used in estimating the value of any mortality based benefit for retirees. As many countries consider mandatory individual retirement accounts as their answer to a secure Social Security system, the question arises as to whether all workers can get true 'market value' annuities when they retire. It is clear today that private sector life annuities are priced assuming that the applicant is healthy-very healthy. Very little underwriting or risk classification now exists in the individual annuity marketplace. This paper reviews 45 recent research papers that look at factors that affect mortality after retirement. In particular, factors that seem to be important in predicting retirement mortality include: age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, income, occupation, marital status, religion, health behaviors, smoking, alcohol, and obesity. For each factor, this paper gives highlights relative to the named factor of the impact expected from that variable as described in the 45 reviewed research papers.

Description: This paper considers the development of the insurance and investment markets in the EC from an historical and legal point of view. The likely changes as a result of the Single European Act are also considered along with possible ways of ensuring the act is met and the role of the actuary in that process. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1991, Vol. 1.

Description: This paper solves the pension benefit allocation problem using an extremely simple accounting approach. It presents a simple accounting argument, which says that the cost for like units of production should increase at the rate of inflation. If we assume that the appropriate units of production for an employee are inflation-adjusted salary, this rationale leads to projected unit credit with the benefit apportioned by interest-adjusted salary [PUCIAS] as the appropriate funding method for pensions. This same rationale can be extended to post-service medical care funding. For post-service medical care, however, the rationale does not lead to PUCIAS, since the rates of inflation for medical care and salary do not cancel. There is also a question whether inflation-adjusted salary should be used as the units of production for post-service medical care. When it is, it is still important avoid aggregating groups with different salary and promotion patterns. When it is not, the widget accounting arguments still hold as far unit costs increasing with the rate of medical care inflation.

Description: A serious problem facing the actuary when his or her company converts to on line transactions processing is that of how to minimize human errors. This paper explains how the availability of the various reserve and cash value factor files in an on line environment permit better checking than has been possible in the past.