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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2013
Gentlemen,—I thank you for again electing me your President, —it is an honour which I highly esteem. You may rest assured that I will, to the utmost of my power, endeavour to perform the duties of the chair, I trust, to your satisfaction.
It is customary on the opening of a session for your President to say a few words by way of “Address” on some subject, of his own selection, which has more or less relation to the general business of the Society. As I had last winter the pleasure of reading a paper which occupied a good deal of my time, I have chosen a subject for which the materials are almost all at hand, but which when strung together may, in their continuity, possess an interest which will not be unwelcome to the members of an Actuarial Society. I propose to consider one or two incidents in the History and Statistics of Life Assurance.
The History of Life Assurance is exceedingly interesting. Bestowing all our attention upon the engagements of the passing hour, we are very apt to forget the arduous up-hill struggles of the many schemes of the past two centuries. If an account should ever be written, as I believe it will, of the career of those futile efforts, it should teach us to be very careful, and watchful of our position. There is in our time, it sometimes appears to me, rather an excess of that spirit of competition which I fear tends to weaken, and not to strengthen. Life Assurance is not entirely one of the exact sciences. The ordinary trader may easily, by applying one or two principles of accounting, exhibit the solvency or insolvency of his business; but it is almost impossible, except in the mass, to fathom the Liabilities of the business of Life Assurance. An ordinary debt is owing now, or a bill will certainly mature on a given date, but our debts accrue in the future, and are not individually dated. In the maturing of a multitude of them we have the utmost confidence.
page 325 note 1 System and Tables of Life Insurance, prepared under the charge of Levi W. Meech, Actuary, Norwich, Conn., U.S.
page 331 note 1 Deutsche Sterblichkeits-Tafeln. Berlin, 1883.
page 334 note 1 After the foregoing was put into type, it was explained that the ages employed in the tabulation are not those stated in the office registers, but that the ages at entry have proceeded upon a fresh calculation of the difference between the year of birth and year of entry, and the ages at exit upon the difference between year of birth and year of exit. The columns of the Statistics do not fully indicate this process, and it is possible therefore that I may not have fully apprehended the exact method followed. The absence of this explanation must be my excuse for assuming that the method of tabulation was analogous to that employed in England and America, and fully accounts for the foregoing criticism.
The year of observation was assumed to run from 1st July, and as the observations were brought to a close on 31st December 1875, those alive at that date had been exposed to risk for six months only of that year, which probably explains the deduction referred to in the context.
In the Table of Aggregate Experience, on pp. 352, 353, I have accepted the results without any alteration.
