1.1. The market in British Government stocks in many ways resembles what might be called a perfect market. In particular, very large amounts can be dealt in, dealing expenses are low, powerful statistical techniques are used to identify price anomalies, and frequent switching operations take place to exploit these anomalies. Given these features, prices of stocks will vary in a highly regular manner, and it should be possible, by the application of graduation methods, to represent the price structure in mathematical terms. If such a descriptive framework can be developed solely from the principle that prices are in equilibrium under the switching action of all participants in the market, it will provide the basis for a mathematical model that could be used for many functions of portfolio management.

1.1. In the past ten years, traditional with-profit endowment assurances have been faced with severe competition from two new products, which offer considerable flexibility to the policyholder combined with certain guarantees not normally available in the traditional endowment policy.

The first of these new products, unit-linked assurance, has been analysed in some depth in recent papers submitted to the Institute, Faculty and Tokyo Congress. In particular, papers by Benjamin, Wilkie and Scott have developed stochastic models that have enabled the premiums and valuation reserves for maturity guarantees under these policies to be quantified with a much greater degree of certainty than had previously been the case.

Every profession should be concerned with the problem of matching training and working practice. The problem is especially a vital one for the small but powerful actuarial profession seeking to adapt to significant changes.

This note gives a brief summary of my Ph.D. thesis, which was based on questionnaires concerning the training of actuaries, and also in § 7 makes reference to a more recent investigation.

A survey was designed and questionnaires despatched in 1973, in an attempt to discover the existing relationship between actuarial training and occupational practice, whether there was any shortcoming in this relationship and if so what might be needed to correct it. The response rate from the 236 actuaries who qualified for the Fellowship of the Institute of Actuaries in the four sets of examinations spanning the two calendar years 1972 and 1973 and who formed the test population was 81% (192 replies).