Some reflections on long-term investments with particular reference to the business of life assurance

Abstract

It is probably true to say that during the past two decades the most perplexing and important of the problems, with which those responsible for the management of Life Assurance Companies have been called upon to deal, has arisen from the investment side of the business rather than from the commercial and actuarial sides. On the whole, the investment policy followed has so far emerged successfully from the searching tests imposed upon it by the events of recent years but the future remains obscure and there are many lessons still to be learned.Life Assurance Companies, by the very nature of their business, are compelled to interest themselves in the problems of long-term investment, and it is worth while, therefore, to enquire whether the ordeal through which they have passed has revealed any defects in the present machinery of long-term lending and investing or in the basic principles which have heretofore governed investment policy.