Unitised with Profits – Gamaliel's Advice

The paper deals with the development of unitised with-profits business in the United Kingdom. The authors trace the recent history of these products and comment on the main reasons for their development. They also deal with corporate issues, including implications for policyholders and shareholders of different fund structures and different types of life office. Pricing and product development issues are also covered. Reserving issues including the range of valuation methods, statutory requirements and policyholders' reasonable expectations are explored. Finally the paper considers the actuary's contribution to the management of unitised with-profits policyholders' expectations.

A note on Life Office Models

A brief description is given of some problems encountered in designing a model office program. The key to an effective and flexible model lies in the structure which the model imposes on the data. An example of a model used for research is described.

Spain: An Outsider's View from Within

We both started working in Spain at the end of 1991: one of us in a joint venture life company between a Spanish health insurer and a U.K. life office, and the other in an international actuarial consultancy.At the time of writing this paper we can only claim in the region of “4 man years” of experience of Spain. Therefore we do not pretend to offer an authoritative view of Spanish insurance or pensions, or of its actuarial profession. Clearly such a text would be better prepared by Spanish actuaries, or other long-standing practitioners of the Spanish market.

Actuaries, Pension Funds and Investment

The authors discuss the investment of pension and other institutional funds, stressing a theme of investing to meet liabilities. Their aim is to stimulate debate by actuaries and the investment community, leading to the development of better approaches to pension fund investment and its monitoring.The first part of the paper considers the matching of assets to liabilities, concentrating on a major principle applicable to actuarial valuations where assets and liabilities are mismatched.The paper goes on to consider principles of institutional investment and includes discussions of the meaning and measurement of risk, the setting of investment objectives, decision-making, asset allocation and investment performance monitoring.