Two families of frailty models – Makeham/Gompertz-gamma and Gompertz-inverse Gaussian – have been considered to graduate insurance-based mortality data. The aims of this exercise are twofold. The first aim is to make use of generalized linear models and to evaluate these against traditional techniques. The second aim is to measure the scale of individual heterogeneity in insurance-based populations. The results indicate that (subject to issues of identifiability) there is evidence of frailty in these populations.
