Summary:

The paper outlines the findings of an investigation into the mortality of South African assured lives, covering the period 1995 to 1998. The investigation was limited to the experiences of whole-life and endowment assurances and was carried out by the Continuous Statistical Investigations (CSI) Committee of the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA).

The investigation was done by: age-band and gender; smoking status; duration; province and whether the policyholder was subject to any form of underwriting. Insufficient data was available for the cause of death and therefore analysis by this factor was not possible. As a result is was not possible to isolate mortality due to AIDS. However, it was possible to split the investigation by the socio-economic class.

The investigation used the exact method of calculating the exposed-to-risk for each individual policy and was based on number of policies rather than number of lives. A policy year-rate interval was used, with age nearest birthday and curtate duration at death.

The paper sets out a detailed analysis of mortality by different factors mentioned above against some of the standard mortality tables, and comments on trends over time. Some of the major findings of the investigation were: worsening mortality below age 50; general improvements in mortality above age 50; substantial differences in mortality between the different socio-economic classes; and signs of anti-selection below age 50, especially in the better socioeconomic classes.

http://www.actuarialsociety.org.za/Portals/1/Documents/fd82399b-a97c-4608-8d19-c1d59ec4a648.pdf