• FROM THE FLOOR: I, for one, am willing to question that broad consensus.
  • Mr. Jermyn, you mentioned the prospect of genetic testing, which theoretically could classify a great number of people or at least certainly a fair number of people who are currently substandard as uninsurable.
  • How do you reconcile that with the actuarial standardof practice on risk classification which holds, as one of its tenets, that we are to encourage the availability of coverage?
• MR. JERMYN: What I was intending to say about genetic testing was that assuming that it became accepted within society and then permeated the insurance industry, we would face significant risk-classification issues and questions, not the least of which would be what to do about the actuarial standards as they currently exist.
  • I wasn't necessarily saying that we would or should be automatically utilizing genetic testing.
  • I think you have a good question and a good issue. That was what I was trying to communicate.
• MR. DESROCHERS: Certainly the process of insurance involves some pooling, and if we get to the point where we can no longer pool risks, then you have to raise some very fundamental questions as to whether insurance has any applicability at all.
  • If we could tell, for example, exactly when everyone would die, clearly there would be no life insurance industry at all.

1992 - SOA - Strategic Product Development, Society of Actuaries - 36p