Every Church of Ireland clergyman whose stipend is payable through the Representative Church Body (the body in whom the funds of the Church were vested at its dis-establishment) must become, and is designated, a compulsory member of its Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund, which was founded in 1876. If the member be unmarried and not more than 35 years of age at date of entry he is charged the normal subscription of £6 per annum, payable quarterly; while, if he be married or aged more than 35 years at date of entry, he must pay such subscription as the Board of the Fund, by the advice of its actuary, may determine.

The ordinary member of a pension fund, if asked whether there is any connection between the high cost of living at present oppressing him and the security of the pension to which he looks forward to support him in his old age many years hence, would probably fail to discover that the one is related to the other. The financial position of pension funds is, however, fundamentally affected by the sudden drop in the purchasing power of the sovereign during the last few years and more directly by the enhanced scales of salaries or wages which have resulted from the change in the value of money, and it is to be feared that in many funds a very serious position has to be faced. The actuary who is called upon to advise as to the situation and to formulate remedies by which equilibrium may be restored has not only difficult professional problems to grapple with, but, having made up his mind as to the course to be recommended, he has to carry with him the responsible officers of the fund, who in their turn have to secure the co-operation of the employer and also the assent of the " ordinary member " of the fund, to whom I have referred above, to the remedies put forward.

The underlying idea of this paper is the valuation of the sum assured (S) in groups of t years by multiplying the total sum by a tabulated function α and by a tabulated β.

The Valuation of the policy liabilities of Industrial Life Assurance Companies presents a number of problems which do not arise in the valuation of the contracts of Ordinary Assurance Offices, and as the President indicated in his recent Presidential Address that they are of interest even to those Members of the Institute who are not directly connected with the business of Industrial Assurance, the present paper is submitted in the hope that it may provide the basis for the discussion of some of these special problems.

The present Note deals with a modification of the method described in vol. li, pp. 118-126.

The method suggested in the original Note necessitated the finding of the values of the first, second and third continuous summations of the data to be valued. These summations in some cases were laborious, and the object of the present contribution is to demonstrate how the arithmetical work can be curtailed without material loss of accuracy, firstly, by reducing the number of continuous summations, and secondly, by summing in quinary groups instead of by individual terms.

An apology is scarcely required for explaining an easy method of constructing select mortality tables; and it is hoped that the method now described and illustrated will prove useful to others, and that they also will find that it gives results sufficiently accurate for all ordinary purposes.

Hitherto, select mortality tables have been constructed only by very elaborate processes; and the amount of labour involved is practically prohibitive in such cases as occur now and then in actuarial practice. Possibly many actuaries do not often require special tables of the kind, but occasions do arise where it is of real importance to construct them. This happened to me in respect of the experience of the female annuitants of the Royal National Pension Fund for Nurses, and hence the method which I now suggest was devised.

It will be recalled that the President remarked in his recent Address that a paper of modest scope on the tabulation of the coming Census would be welcome as a means of promoting a discussion at this Institute. The present paper has accordingly been written in the hope that it may serve to elicit suggestions, for possible submission to the authorities, as to points in censal tabulation in which actuaries are specially interested. The fact that important data as to ages of children in relation to the ages of parents will be available for the first time as a result, of the forthcoming Census seems to make it specially advisable that the actuarial profession should consider the subject of tabulation while there is yet time to give effect to practicable proposals. For this reason the present paper is confined to questions of tabulation. Presumably there will be opportunity later for consideration of the many interesting questions that arise upon the subjects of graduation and adjustment and with regard to the National life Tables.