At a time when attention is focused upon our foreign trade and when there is widespread recognition of the need to pay with goods and with services for the food and raw materials we are compelled to obtain abroad, there is much to be said for an appraisal of the overseas activities of British life assurance companies and for a discussion of the major problems calling for immediate attention. The subject was last dealt with in a paper read before the Institute by Mr W. F. Gardner in 1935, but the intervening years have been not uneventful, and today the accent is somewhat changed, although it will be found that the previous paper deals with many of the problems confronting us now.