Section 28 of the Friendly Societies Act 1896 provides for the assets and liabilities of every registered friendly society to be valued at least once in every five years but gives the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies the power to grant exemption from valuation in suitable cases. Until 1933 this power to grant exemption from valuation was normally exercised in the case of a dividing friendly society or of the dividing section of a society with more than one section. The Chief Registrar, in his Report for the year 1933, indicated his intention of giving individual consideration, as each certificate of exemption expired, to the alternative of requiring the society to be valued. Since then many dividing societies have been refused exemption from valuation and what was formerly little more than a theoretical problem, namely, whether or not the liabilities of a dividing friendly society are susceptible to actuarial valuation, has become a practical problem to which has been added the difficulty of giving suitable advice and of explaining a technical subject in a manner which will assist the members to understand the true financial condition of the society.