SCOR researchers continuously capture and analyze experience data to advance our understanding of mortality risk. Our research spans a variety…
Estimating future trends in mortality plays a significant part in life (re)insurers’ product development and portfolio valuation. Like other business…
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, one heard anecdotally that suicide rates increased during the peak of the financial…
One function of the underwriting staff at Transamerica Reinsurance is to perform audits of our clients’ recently issued business. Not…
Actuaries occasionally encounter inconsistencies in mortality experience that cannot be explained by typical causes of fluctuation (i.e., u nderwriting, market…
A case in point is year-to-year death claims analysis – where actual claims often deviate from expected. These claims deviations…
Using the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File (DMF) provides the opportunity to perform nontraditional mortality studies – non-traditional in…
Analyzing insured mortality by cause of death (COD) often provides insights that a typical actual-to-expected study may not reveal. In…
In The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Taleb explains the realm of the black swan. The…
Analyzing insured mortality by cause of death (COD) often provides insights that a typical actual-to-expected study may not reveal. Our…
Individual life insurance is a voluntary purchase decision and for it to remain a viable product, insureds must pay premiums…
Individual life insurance is a voluntary purchase decision, and it is a tough sell even when the premium is commensurate…
As part of the recently released 2008 VBT mortality tables, the Society of Actuaries introduced a theoretical model of the…
In developing mortality rates, actuaries smoothly increase rates by age and duration. We accept that some anomalies appear in the…
What actions should a pricing actuary take when a mortality study is deemed less than fully credible? Recall from Part…
In today’s competitive term life insurance market, direct writers are revisiting their list of pricing assumptions to develop more accurate…
Contrary to common misunderstanding, the credibility assigned to a mortality study has nothing to do with quality of underwriting that…
The bane of pricing actuaries is thier desire for more and more data in a preferred risk environment that is…
It is time for both reinsurers and direct writing companies to take a hard look at their mortality assumptions for…
As Baby Boomers approach retirement, the older-age segment of the population is receiving greater interest from life insurers as a…
Life insurance companies have long offered premium rates per $1000 of face value that vary by face amount band. These…
Reviewing emerging mortality experience has always been important to assessing overall product performance and profitability. While data analysis in the…
Reviewing emerging mortality experience has always been important to assessing overall product performance and profitability. While data analysis in the…
Modern mortality theory presumes that preferred insureds will exhibit lower mortality than their non-preferred counterparts. In Part II of this…
When reviewing mortality study experience, it is important to assess not only the overall level of mortality but underlying mortality…
When reviewing mortality study experience, it is important to assess not only the overall level of mortality but underlying mortality…
In pricing new products, actuaries are often called upon to determine mortality assumptions for preferred risk class designs that bear…
Life insurance pricing is a rich interplay of various factors and assumptions, including lapse rates, expenses, mortality costs and margins.…