In reading the following remarks, three considerations should be clearly borne in mind.

Firstly, it has been necessary to describe some of the benefits valued, but this description in no way purports to be an authoritative interpretation of the Act, nor in fact could it be.

Secondly, any opinions expressed are entirely personal ones and have no official authority.

Thirdly, the examples given are merely specimens of the way in which official statistics may be used to obtain the required functions. Since each computation was part of an enormous mass of co-related calculations, it has not always been possible to divorce a particular problem from its context, and the examples must be taken neither as necessarily the best methods to apply in all circumstances nor indeed as being in all cases the methods adopted where actually the function in question was developed from another which was already available.

Under the heading group insurance may be included all types of insurance contract whereby a number of persons are by one policy covered against a given risk. In present day practice, however, its use is chiefly confined to the one special policy under which the lives of a group of persons—usually a firm's employees— are assured on a One Year Renewable Term basis, usually without medical examination.

Group insurance in this form originated in America and has proved extremely popular both in that country and in Canada. In this country it has not received so warm a welcome and it is only within recent years that British offices have given it their serious attention.

The first investigation to be made on the continuous plan adopted by the Institute and Faculty has been that into the Annuity experience for the period immediately following the close of the investigation into the Mortality of Annuitants 1900-1920 (which traced the experience of individual annuities).

There were three very good reasons for this:—

(1) The investigation could proceed while data relating to Assured lives were being collected (the Continuous Annuity Experience dates from 1921 while the Assured lives will run only from 1924).

(2) Having obtained so recent an experience as that for the period 1900-1920, there was the opportunity to watch the trend of annuitant mortality without any material break.

(3) It acted as a “pilot” run before the more important venture into the Assured lives experience.

The subject of Group Life Insurance schemes has been quite recently discussed by the Society (J.S.S. Vol. III. No. 3) and no useful purpose can be served by a repetition of remarks regarding such schemes.

However, there are two points which deserve further consideration. The first of these relates to what might be termed underwriting rules—or, in other words, regulations to which every contract must conform. Each individual contract should be written, so far as possible, on such a basis as will preclude the writing of unsatisfactory business and in this connection such points as the number of lives to be covered, maximum and minimum amounts of insurance, etc., fall to be considered.

It is scarcely necessary in a Society such as this to prepare any defence of the practice of collecting statistics although we know that among those whose profession does not involve the use of figures, statistical tables are regarded with a certain amount of suspicion.

If I were in need of any apology for upholding the need for systematic collection and analysis of data I should refer my questioner to page 83 of the Report of the Royal Commission on National Health Insurance where he would find a strongly expressed opinion in favour thereof.

I wish to make it quite clear that in the remarks which follow there is no mention of modern statistical methods of the Karl Pearson type. It occurred to me, however, that a short description of some of the processes employed in dealing with the masses of figures involved in the operations of large Approved Societies might be of interest.

The “New Spirit in Industry” appears to be beginning to assert itself in many ways, one of these being the inauguration of Staff Benefit Schemes of all kinds. This is an excellent thing from every point of view and a matter which actuaries must necessarily follow with the closest attention. The title of this paper is very wide in its scope, and any attempt to treat of the subject completely would involve a volume rather than a Students' Society paper. It is therefore proposed to limit these remarks to the consideration of the form in which a scheme may be set up, i.e. either as an individual Pension Fund or by means of contracts effected with an Assurance Company, and then to the discussion of schemes established in the latter manner only.

Privately administered pension schemes may be divided into 3 main classes:—

(1) those which provide pensions based on the salary received by the members.

(2) The type known as the “Money-purchase” fund in which each year's contribution is applied as a single premium to purchase an amount of pension at the retiring age.

(3) Funds which provide pensions which are fixed in amount in return for a definite contribution which varies according to the age at entry.

There are, of course, numerous funds which do not fall exactly into one of these categories—in fact, private funds are usually framed so as to suit the individual needs or preferences of the employers and the members.