The Life Assurer's Handbook, and Key to Life Assurance, Ed. by G. Clifford (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ..."Annuities," in the "Encyclopedia Britannica, ' that the discrepancy was really much greater. Mr. Milne recommended the managers of the Sun to adopt a table framed by him from observations made by Dr. Heysham on the rate of mortality at Carlisle. It gives a decidedly lower rate of mortality than the Northampton table, and as it offered proportionate advantages to life assurers, there can be no doubt that Mr. Milne's researches gave a great stimulus to life assurance in England. The Carlisle table has, in its turn, given way in many instances to later statistics of mortality, and the progress of actuarial science has rendered it necessary for the editor of the new edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica" to entrust the article "Annuities" to a living actuary (Mr. Sprague). But Mr. Milne did good work in his day, and conferred benefits, not only upon the life office of which he was the actuary, but upon the cause of life assurance generally. The general opinion in his day was that insured lives were decidedly above the average. "We owe, however, to the sound judgment of Mr. Milne the dictum, which, in these days of competition, every life assurance director should lay to heart, that "all the caution and selection which the offices in general can exercise is necessary to keep the lives insured up to the average goodness of the bulk of the population." When a bad life is refused by one office, it is offered to another, and good judges have doubted whether, if the results of the experience of all the offices were accurately known, there would be much foundation for the belief in the superiority of insured lives. The Sun Life Office, having confidence in their actuary, adopted in 1820 the fresh tables calculated by...