Description: This article from the Digest of Informal Discussion, Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1955 Volume 7, Number 17, identifies the participants and summarizes their comments. Discussion topics include: whether changes in ordinary insurance mortality are significant enough to consider preparing a more up-to-date mortality table for reserve purposes problems involved in constructing and securing statutory approval of annuity reserve tables with built in mortality improvement factors extent to which differences between current premium rate mortality assumptions and CSO mortality contribute to problems with deficiency reserves and arguments for and against the adoption of a different actuarial basis for deficiency reserves.

Description: This paper presents a statistical methodology based upon information theory, for adjusting mortality tables to obtain exactly some known individual characteristics, while obtaining a table that is as close as possible to a standard one. Followed by a discussion paper submitted

Description: This paper is from the Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1956 Volume 8, Number 20. It was presented at the 1956 Spring Meetings of the Society of Actuaries for discussion. The author presents an outline of how difficulties in the determination of a frequency distribution of the expected costs may be overcome by, in part, applying the concept of using a series of random numbers with a view of making mortality studies for each life in a group of annuitants. The paper also presents the results of some experiments which were designed to discover whether or not the concept could be conducted on an IBM 650 electronic data processing machine.

Description: From the 1960 Transactions Vol. 12 No. 32, this paper provides a comprehensive introduction to nonproportional reinsurance and its application in life and health insurance, and employee benefit plans. The author defines the various types of reinsurance and notes that to date nonproportional reinsurance has not been widely used in the U.S. for life insurance, and explores areas for possible application. Theoretical aspects such as formulas for premium determination are also discussed.

Description: Discussion papers on a paper dealing with minimum statutory nonforfeiture values for retirement annuity contracts.

Description: Discussion of the 1958 CSO Mortality Table: 1. Considerations regarding continuous functions, age last birthday and changing reserve methods 2. Likelihood of Canadian adoption 3. Impact on extended insurance and automatic premium loan provisions.

Description: A. Discusssion of the practical considerations involved in deciding whether or not to adopt projected mortality rates in connection with individual annuities, settlement options, retirement income policies, and the various forms of group annuities. B. In view of increased administrative expenses, discussion of the arguments for and against imposing limitations on the granting of settlement options with respect to size of policy, including the practicality of providing for the expense of administering supplementary contracts other than through the use of conservative mortality and interest assumptions.

Description: This report discusses the use of a basic table of net annual claim costs for hospital and surgical expense insurance as adopted by the NAIC in 1956 to be used as a minimum reserve standard for loss-of-time benefits. It is the intention of this paper to outline the characteristics of the table, to discuss the factors which influence reserve considerations, and to describe suitable methods of determining active and disabled life reserves for the types of benefit provisions now most generally offered. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1965, Vol. 17, Pt. 1, No. 49.

Description: From the 1960 Transactions Vol. 12 No. 32, this article is a discussion of the paper ‘Introduction to Nonproportional Reinsurance,’ by Herbert L. Feay, which also appears in this volume of the Transactions. The contributors to the discussion provide their comments with respect to the author’s paper, raising some questions, but generally finding the paper an excellent introduction to a complex and not well explored field, at least from the perspective of life actuaries. The author, in his reply to the discussion, emphasizes that the paper was meant as an introduction to stimulate further work in this field.

Description: When an insurer classifies risks for the purpose of setting rates, one of the goals is to achieve equity. In general, however, inequities can be introduced when only certain factors are considered and others ignored. This paper, guided by ideas used by economists to measure income inequality, proposes a method of measuring this inequity. From Transactions of Society of Actuaries 1987, Vol. 39.