Life Office Research Articles

Restructuring Mutuals—Principles and Practice

1.1 This paper owes its existence on two counts to the late Jim Souness whose term of office as President of the Faculty coincided with the bulk of our research. Firstly, as President, he encouraged Faculty research groups to be active and to produce material worthy of sessional papers. More directly it was the late President who funnelled our general investigations of life office management (which had continued after the Group's 1987 sessional paper) towards the issue of demutualisation.There have been several notable demutualisations of life offices in recent years, yet there is little published research in the UK other than case studies into the actuarial issues which these restructurings raise for the profession. Furthermore much of what has been published pertains to overseas regimes not subject to UK-style regulation. However at the time of writing we are aware that another paper (reference 20) was being written concurrently, and it relates specifically to the UK.

Profit Reporting in a Mutual Life Office

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Economies of Scale in UK Life Insurance Companies: An Empirical Approach

The paper described the Life Offices Association's inter-office expense investigation (IOEI) which has been set up so that data on life office costs might be made available to the actuarial profession and their significance discussed. The paper included various expense analyses. One of these analyses used a linear regression equation to determine if economies of scale were being achieved by life insurance offices. (Pages 372 to 374 of the paper). The authors stated that they would have liked to pursue the subject further, but were severely restricted by the problem of confidentiality. The basic data are strictly confidential: without knowledge of which data relate to which office, it is impossible, for example to exclude unsuitable outliers or utilise additional information about the offices etc.

Restructuring mutuals—principles and practice

1.1 This paper owes its existence on two counts to the late Jim Souness whose term of office as President of the Faculty coincided with the bulk of our research. Firstly, as President, he encouraged Faculty research groups to be active and to produce material worthy of sessional papers. More directly it was the late President who funnelled our general investigations of life office management (which had continued after the Group's 1987 sessional paper) towards the issue of demutualisation.There have been several notable demutualisations of life offices in recent years, yet there is little published research in the UK other than case studies into the actuarial issues which these restructurings raise for the profession. Furthermore much of what has been published pertains to overseas regimes not subject to UK-style regulation. However at the time of writing we are aware that another paper (reference 20) was being written concurrently, and it relates specifically to the UK.

Repackaging the Life Office

Traditionally the interest of actuaries and many other life assurance specialists in the ‘corporate structure’ of life offices has largely been limited to questions surrounding the distinctions between mutual and proprietary companies. More recently, attention has also been paid to composite insurance companies—principally to protect the interests of the long term business policyholders.Developments over the past ten years or so have led many life offices to reappraise their corporate structure. A number of companies have decided to set up a (non-insurance) group holding company, the principal subsidiary of which would be the established life assurance company. This paper will consider some of the pressures which have resulted in these reorganizations, in particular:(a) the impact of Section 16 of the Insurance Companies Act 1982 which restricts insurance companies to only conducting activities in connection with insurance;(b) the various provisions in the Insurance Companies Regulations 1981 which limit the admissibility of particular assets and specify minimum accounting standards which must be adopted when writing down certain fixed assets;(c) the additional flexibility with regard to marketing and the financing of marketing costs which a revised structure will allow;(d) the purchase of companies for sums substantially in excess of their net asset value which may give rise to difficulties in accounting for the ‘goodwill element’ in the purchase price;(e) the potential tax advantages (and, in some cases, disadvantages) which may result from the creation of a non-insurance holding company.

The Intermediary's Dilemma: Assessing the Financial Strength of Life Offices

The Intermediary's Dilemma: Assessing the Financial Strength of Life Offices

Impact of Financial Services Act on Investment Products

The implementation of the Financial Services Act 1986 has forced retailers of investment products to become tied to a single insurance company or to act as an independent by selecting the best product for the customer from the entire market. As a result of this many retailers of investment products have become tied to single insurance companies leading to a significant change in the relationship between the manufacturers and retailers of financial products. In addition there has been a sharp reduction in the levels of business transacted through the independent channel and the availability of independent financial advice. This has affected manufacturers in different ways depending upon their existing sources and mix of business. In the longer term this is likely to lead to a reduction in the number of life offices and the more rapid creation of financial conglomerates based upon the top ten banks and building societies.

Implementing location independent invocation

The problems of finding objects in large and wide-area networks where objects may change their location in volatile memory as well as on stable storage are presented. The authors discuss possible solutions and describe those adopted in the Hermes system (a corporate wide, real life office application). They have designed and developed a location-independent-invocation (LII) mechanism that combines finding with invocation, using temporal location information. The mechanism also updates the system's knowledge of an object's location as a side-effect of invocation and object migration. Assumptions about object mobility indicate that objects are likely to be found within a few propagations of an invocation. If they cannot be found in this way, stable-storage and name services are used to locate the object. The major contribution of this work is to show how LII can be achieved in a large and dynamic environment in which objects are supported by neither are operating system nor the programming language.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Modelling a with-profits life office

1.1 In this paper I intend to concentrate on the application of mathematics and the problems faced and (sometimes) solved by such application, rather than on the mathematics itself. That is not to belittle the mathematics in any way, and I would like to acknowledge at the start that the stochastic financial model which underlies the results given in this talk is based on Professor Wilkie's model as detailed in T.F.A.39, 341.

The financial management of a with-profit long term fund — some questions of disclosure

1.1 There are three starting points for this paper. The first is Marshall Field's challenging Presidential Address to the Institute of Actuaries in 1986 on the subject of ‘Risk and Expectation’. The second is the example, still fresh in our minds, of a medium-sized mutual life office which overstretched itself and found it necessary to merge with a competitor. The third is the impending requirement, stemming from the Financial Services Act 1986, to give an investment client, including the holder or prospective holder of an insurance savings contract, what is described as ‘best advice’.

Increasing Competition between Banks and Life Assurance Companies: A Clash of Giants or a Non‐Event?

Like many other Western Countries, Australia's post‐war financial system was tightly controlled by government regulation. In a few short years, however, following a government appointed inquiry, most of the regulations have been swept away, making it possible, for example, for life assurance companies to enter the banking industry. At the same time, changes in official regulation of life assurance have made it easier for banks to retaliate by entering the life assurance business. The background to these developments are outlined and some of their effects on both banks and life offices are discussed.

The Effects of Solvency Margins on U.K. Life Companies.

The requirement for a United Kingdom life office to hold solvency margins in addition to its normal actuarial reserves took full effect on 15 March 1984. At the time of writing, solvency margins for U.K. life offices have therefore had an effective life of under two years. Before the introduction of the regulations, many comments were made within the life insurance industry about the effects which the introduction of the life solvency margins would have on the financial position of U.K. life offices. This therefore seems an appropriate time to reflect on the theoretical financial consequences of solvency margins from the point of view of a U.K. life company, and comment on the practical effects which have been observed to date.

On the risk adjusted discount rate for determining life office appraisal values

1.1 A number of papers have been written in recent years that discuss the valuation of the business of a life office, examples of these are Burrows and Whitehead (1987) and Bunch (1986). These papers recognize the need to use a risk adjusted discount rate in the calculations. Burrows and Whitehead devote a section of their paper to the determination of such a rate. In their abstract they state that “…an entire paper could be devoted to this subject”. This latter point is supported by the existence already of a number of papers in the finance literature on the very topic of determining risk adjusted discount rates e.g. Robichek and Myers (1966), Fama (1977).1.2 This paper outlines some results of the theory of determining risk adjusted discount rates and the valuation of risky cash flows as developed in the finance literature, and discusses the application of this theory to the determination of life office appraisal values. Some comments are made on Section 3 of the Burrows and Whitehead paper.

Matching and portfolio selection: Part 2

8.1 This paper is concerned with the selection of investment portfolios to meet specified criteria which involve the liabilities of a long term investing institution such as a pension fund or a life office. In Part 1 (5) I showed a certain relationship between, on the one hand, portfolios selected according to a criterion of pure matching to the liabilities and, on the other hand, portfolios selected according to a more general criterion of ‘efficiency’. This connection points to a particular actuarial approach to the selection of portfolios, which is now further examined in Part 2.8.2 Writing Part 2 separately presents an opportunity to re-state the main ideas. The next few paragraphs recapitulate the basic points with a view to reducing, within the subsequent discussion, the amount of cross-reference to Part 1, and to the three preceding papers on which the study is based.

Promises, Promises: The Myth and Reality of Life Office Quotations.

Promises, Promises: The Myth and Reality of Life Office Quotations.

The Financial Management of a With-Profit Long-Term Fund—Some Questions of Disclosure.

1.1. There are three starting points for this paper. The first is Marshall Field's challenging Presidential Address to the Institute of Actuaries in 1986 on the subject of “Risk and Expectation”. The second is the example, still fresh in our minds, of a medium-sized mutual life office which overstretched itself and found it necessary to merge with a competitor. The third is the impending requirement, stemming from the Financial Services Act 1986, to give an investment client, including the holder or prospective holder of an insurance savings contract, what is described as “best advice”.

The life associations' inter-office expense investigation

1.1.1. In the course of the discussion of the paper by Praetz at the International Congress of Actuaries in Sydney, reference was made to the existence of the ongoing Expense Investigation conducted amongst life offices in the United Kingdom. Considerable interest was aroused and it was subsequently suggested that a paper describing this investigation be presented to the actuarial bodies in order that data on life office costs might be made available to the profession and its significance discussed. In agreeing to present such a paper the authors considered that its scope should be extended to include a study of the attitudes of offices and actuaries to expense analysis and control and of the uses made by offices and actuaries of the results of the Expense Investigation and other expense analyses.

Statistical analysis of life assurance lapses

Data have been generously supplied by the Faculty of Actuaries Withdrawals Research Group. These data cover the lapse or withdrawal experience for the calendar year 1976 of seven Scottish life offices. An extensive analysis has been published by the Research Group although, for reasons we shall discuss later, we believe that the approach outlined here is better able to describe the structure of the data than the detailed (and somewhat pedestrian) tabulations of this earlier paper.

Join the DOTS and Make a Picture.

The Guinness Book of Records once claimed that the number π to a million decimal places, printed in full and bound in book form, was the Most Boring Book in the World. To the uninitiated, the Department of Trade Returns of U.K. life offices must seem to be in the same class, and when I chose the topic I wondered if this might affect the welcome which this paper would receive. For anyone with a professional interest in life offices, however, the Returns are too important to ignore. They contain the greatest amount of published data on the U.K. life assurance industry, they form an essential prop of our liberal supervisory system and they ought to be a line of defence against tighter controls.Life assurance has always been unusual in attracting long term contractual savings in large amounts. This was even more true a century ago than it is today, as there were no great pension funds or unit trusts. Human nature being what it is, this led some to view life assurance with more enthusiasm than sense. The mid-nineteenth century saw numerous small life offices set up, many of which were soon in trouble and it became common for such offices to be taken over by others. This was not so bad when the business was transferred to a larger, sounder office but quite often the new proprietor was an office in no better state than that taken over.

The property market, property valuations and property performance measurement

1.1. The Institute has discussed papers on most aspects of institutional investment in recent years, with the notable exception of property. This is not due to the lack of importance of this investment sector to pension funds and life offices, but perhaps to the greater role of actuaries (rather than surveyors) in the other investment media and to the interest in mathematical models for gilts and equities.1.2. In this paper we have not tried to produce a mathematical model of the property market, a new valuation method for property or solutions to the extensive problems of property performance measurement and indices. We have, however, tried to pull together, in a single paper, the volumes of material on the property market and property valuation methods. We have also tried to set down some of the pitfalls of property performance measurement, which often tend to be overlooked in the relentless pursuit for more statistics in this important area.