A product innovator of extraordinary talent, Mr. Chapin had begun thinking in the 1940s about the possibilities of a flexible life insurance policy, but saw that its complications were then unmanageable.
By the 1960s, recognizing that advent of computers had changed all that, he resigned from his company to concentrate on the idea.
After he had approached several companies with designs, Minnesota Mutual agreed to undertake development of such a contract.
Introduced in 1971, adjustable life, the first policy designed to take care of a lifetime of changing insurance needs, and its later cousin, variable adjustable life, accounted in due course for 95 percent of that company's individual life insurance sales.
In his 1976 Society paper, "Toward Adjustable Individual Life Policies" (TSA Vol. XXVIII, p. 237), Mr. Chapin graciously attributed the birth of the idea to the late Edward A. Rieder (TASA XLVIII, 1947, p. 283), and acknowledged the impetus given it by Alfred N. Guertin in a 1964 report.
Further particulars of the history of this product can be found in Wilfred A. Kraegel's discussion of Mr. Chapin's paper.