Description: Discussion of a direct writer survey and a reinsurer survey conducted in the fall of 2002 by the Society of Actuaries. The surveys asked a number of questions about underwriting criteria needed to qualify for preferred risk. They also asked questions about the percentage of issues in each underwriting category and the mortality assumptions for the different categories.

Description: Transcript of the Q&A period from Session 5A. The paper presented proposes a new method to price the longevity risk premia in order to tackle the pricing obstacle.

Description: Transcript of the Q&A period from Session 6B: Health Status and its Impact on Mortality

Description: Discussion of “Health Expectancy” paper and reply from author, Faye Albert. Discussion of Human Behavior: An Impediment to Future Mortality and Discussion of Health, Wealth and Wisdom - Living Long, Living Well: An Actuary Muses on Longevity

Description: Today, a plethora of tools and approaches exist to develop lifetime projections of long-term care (LTC) business. Within these tools lie two distinct approaches to project mortality; namely, by using assumptions that are applied: (1) to an all-lives exposure base, or (2) separately for disabled- versus active-lives exposure bases. Using disabled versus active mortality allows for more granular modeling of the two different cohorts that exhibit dramatically different mortality. And so, when using an all-lives mortality assumption, is the projection missing important details about the appropriate mortality level? This article seeks to not only answer this question, but also answer how a “traditional” all-lives mortality assumption can be impacted when you introduce a combination of the two modeling techniques into the development of a mortality assumption. To answer these questions, we examined the experience and results developed from one c ompany as an illustrative case study.

Description: Presented at May 1996 Spring Meeting. This session analyzes the factors that influence the mortality differences between countries and between population and insured-lives mortality.

Description: Abstract: The percentage of the population who are obese has grown dramatically worldwide over the last several decades, although stabilizing recently in the United States. Studies have found the effects on mortality to be inconsistent and controversial because of methodological differences and the complexity of the relationship between obesity and mortality. This paper discusses this relationship and sheds light on the likely effects of this epidemic. Issues associated with the so-called obesity-mortality paradox, where mortality experience is lower for those individuals who are overweight and in some who are obese compared with the mortality of those in the normal weight category, are examined. Although certain recently reported studies of the relationship between mortality and obesity indicate that obesity is related to a reduced percent of additional mortality, this may in part be due to the shorter average time that those currently obese have been exposed to their condition. Nevertheless, the amount of health care costs and rates of disability associated with being obese are significant, contributing to the increase in overall health care costs as they become more numerous and age. Although obesity is being addressed with a great deal of activity and publicity, they will continue to prove challenging for individuals and society to manage and overcome.

Description: The percentage of the population who are obese has grown dramatically worldwide over the last several decades, although stabilizing recently in the United States. Studies have found the effects on mortality to be inconsistent and controversial because of methodological differences and the complexity of the relationship between obesity and mortality. This paper discusses this relationship and sheds light on the likely effects of this epidemic. Issues associated with the so-called obesity-mortality paradox, where mortality experience is lower for those individuals who are overweight and in some who are obese compared with the mortality of those in the normal weight category, are examined. Although certain recently reported studies of the relationship between mortality and obesity indicate that obesity is related to a reduced percent of additional mortality, this may in part be due to the shorter average time that those currently obese have been exposed to their condition. Nevertheless, the amount of health care costs and rates of disability associated with being obese are significant, contributing to the increase in overall health care costs as they become more numerous and age. Although obesity is being addressed with a great deal of activity and publicity, they will continue to prove challenging for individuals and society to manage and overcome.

Description: View the complete issue for the August 2014 Reinsurance News newsletter.

Description: This paper describes risk-factor-dependent multiple decrements and actuarial cost functions as a general compartment model, a discrete time and discrete state stochastic model of morbidity and mortality processes. For large numbers of risk factors, the model is extended to its natural continuous time and state form. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1991, Vol. 43.