P. 74, line 13 for $100,000,000 read $500,000,000.

P. 104, line 2 for “James” read “John”.

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.

Most actuaries would agree that the determination of the rate of interest to be employed in the valuation of a pension fund is one of the most difficult of the problems which have to be faced. It is usually possible, either from the actual experience of the staff in question or from a knowledge of the experience of other staffs which are similar in character, to form a fairly accurate estimate of the rates of mortality likely to be experienced before the pension age is reached and, with perhaps rather less certainty, the rates of withdrawal from service. So far as the rates of mortality after retirement are concerned, there is available a considerable volume of data regarding the experience of annuitants and of the pensioners of a number of large funds, and so long as a reasonable allowance is made for future improvement no great difficulty is likely to be experienced on this account. It is true that the experience of some of the larger pension funds has shown that the mortality of pensioners tends to fluctuate over a period of years, but on the whole such a standard can be adopted as will be likely to be adequate for many years.