Description: Presented at Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. This paper examines the trends of mortality improvement in the United States for the consideration of the task force set up in 2010 to review the life tables for Group Annuity and the related assumptions for mortality improvement 'Scale AA', using more recent information from the Social Security Administration life tables and data derived from the Human Mortality Database.

Description: The Society’s Committee to Recommend a New Mortality Basis for Individual Annuity Valuation was formed in 1980 at NAIC request because the margins in the 1971 IAM Table had eroded. This article describes the development of the 1983 Table a and shows how well the 1973 Experience Table fits the underlying data.

Description: This article delves into a new line of statistical thinking of the author, that may be useful for product development actuaries. The key concept is how product design can produce products that diversify quickly, meaning that the company can be confident of a profitable product line, based on fewer sales than might be true for other designs.