Concept
Actuary
Related concepts (8)
Actuarial science
Actuarial science is the discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in insurance, pension, finance, investment and other industries and professions. More generally, actuaries apply rigorous mathematics to model matters of uncertainty and life expectancy. Actuaries are professionals trained in this discipline. In many countries, actuaries must demonstrate their competence by passing a series of rigorous professional examinations focused in fields such as probability and predictive analysis.
Pension
A pension (ˈpɛnʃən; ) is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during the individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be: a "defined benefit plan", where defined periodic payments are made in retirement (and the sponsor of the scheme (e.g. the employer) must make further payments into the fund if necessary to support these defined retirement payments), or a "defined contribution plan", under which defined amounts are paid in during the working life, and the retirement payments are whatever can be afforded from the fund.
Life insurance
Life insurance (or life assurance, especially in the Commonwealth of Nations) is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of an insured person (often the policyholder). Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal illness or critical illness can also trigger payment. The policyholder typically pays a premium, either regularly or as one lump sum.
Life annuity
A life annuity is an annuity, or series of payments at fixed intervals, paid while the purchaser (or annuitant) is alive. The majority of life annuities are insurance products sold or issued by life insurance companies however substantial case law indicates that annuity products are not necessarily insurance products. Annuities can be purchased to provide an income during retirement, or originate from a structured settlement of a personal injury lawsuit.
Insurance
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss. An entity which provides insurance is known as an insurer, insurance company, insurance carrier, or underwriter. A person or entity who buys insurance is known as a policyholder, while a person or entity covered under the policy is called an insured.
Mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. One of the earliest known mathematicians was Thales of Miletus (624-546 BC); he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales's theorem.
Life table
In actuarial science and demography, a life table (also called a mortality table or actuarial table) is a table which shows, for each age, what the probability is that a person of that age will die before their next birthday ("probability of death"). In other words, it represents the survivorship of people from a certain population. They can also be explained as a long-term mathematical way to measure a population's longevity. Tables have been created by demographers including John Graunt, Reed and Merrell, Keyfitz, and Greville.
Life expectancy
Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the span of a life. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth (LEB), which can be defined in two ways. Cohort LEB is the mean length of life of a birth cohort (in this case, all individuals born in a given year) and can be computed only for cohorts born so long ago that all their members have died. Period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year.