My intention is to give some simple illustrations of the difficulties which arise when the market rate of interest has sunk below the limit of solvency for parts of a company's stock of life contracts. In fact, the “partial liquidation” which at such a contingency would appear most natural to the unbiased mind of an actuary, does not seem to be seriously contemplated in insurance legislation. As regards Sweden, this mathematically correct reduction of the liabilities of some of the contracts could perhaps be realized within the legal frame in Mutual Offices. But it is impossible for other companies. It seems therefore necessary to attack the problem from the purely actuarial point of view. If we can find a technically satisfactory solution, it might then be possible to go farther with the question of giving the procedure legal shape.

The subject of sickness insurance does not appear to have been previously discussed before this Institute except in relation to Friendly Societies and the National Health Insurance Act. There is, however, a most comprehensive paper by Mr W. A. Robertson, the present President of the Faculty, in the Transactions, Vol. xiv, page 21. Disability in the sense of long-term sickness insurance has been considered on several occasions, but purely as an added benefit to life assurance contracts. The results shown by the American offices, who at one time transacted a large volume of this business, have been anything but encouraging.

It appears from the Journal Index that as regards Indian insurance, contributions to the Journal have been almost entirely concerned with various aspects of mortality in India. Apart from matters relating to mortality, the latest reference in the Journal was in 1912 when the Indian Life Assurance Companies Act, then lately passed, was printed with prefatory notes by Mr A. T. Winter. It seems appropriate that we should give some consideration to the new Act repealing the Act of 1912.

If a pebble on a steep hill is disturbed from a state of rest, it will probably roll down the hill gathering speed as it goes, and, if the hill ends in a precipice, the pebble will, unless it is checked in its course, eventually fall over the edge. So long as the pebble is rolling down the hill it is within sight of an observer on the hill, but when it falls over the precipice it passes out of his sight; its disappearance occurs suddenly. There is no violent change in the pebble's speed or direction as it passes over the edge, so the suddenness of its disappearance is not due to any alteration in its motion but to the fact that it has rolled down beyond the level of the edge of the hill.

It is now nearly a decade since the author had the honour of submitting a paper on the mortality of assured lives in India, and the manner of its reception by the members of the Institute has emboldened him to make a second venture. Particular impetus was given to the writing of this paper by the fact that, in the discussion that followed the reading of the earlier paper, several speakers observed that they would be interested to know the results of an analysis of the mortality prevailing in the large subcontinent of India, subject to varying climates and other conditions of life, according to geographical situation, and an attempt has now been made to give this information as revealed by the statistics of the “Oriental”. The words, “the more investigations were made into mortality in various parts of the world and in various types of business the better”, with which Sir (then Mr) William Elderton closed his observations on the earlier paper, are typical of the attitude of the Institute towards papers on mortality investigations, particularly as applied to countries like India, which are becoming very important from a life assurance point of view. Information concerning the mortality to which the various parts of the country are subject is, however, still very meagre.

The recent paper by Dr Hagstroem (J.I.A. Vol. LXX, p. 119) directs attention to the very closely related subject of the effect on life assurance premiums of changes in the rate of interest. Some four years ago, in the course of an address before the American Life Convention, Mr V. R. Smith studied the relationship of the interest rate to life assurance premiums from a different angle. This note is an attempt to develop the mathematical theory underlying Mr Smith's method and to present some results on the basis of the A 1924–29 Table.

There are so many phases of the problem of blood pressure that I shall limit myself to dealing with a recent investigation of the mortality on lives accepted as “standard risks” by the New York Life Insurance Company.

The experience investigated was that of new policies issued from 1925 to 1936, inclusive, observed from entry until the anniversaries of the policies in 1937. The investigation was by policies and was divided into two groups, (a) those in which there was no impairment, and (b) those in which there appeared minor impairments but not of sufficient moment to place the policyholders in a substandard group. The expected deaths were obtained according to the company's standard experience for the same years of issue and exposure. The total number of policies emerging by death was 9552.

In Todhunter's Compound Interest (4th edition, chapters 8 and 9) several methods are given for the approximate determination of the rate of interest involved in a given transaction. In these methods there is no adequate treatment of the errors contained in the results. No simple means are given whereby the computer can tell to how many significant figures the results can be trusted.