Information Matrix

In my previous post I illustrated the effects of over-dispersion in population data. Of course, an actuary could quite properly ask: why use ONS data?

Scientists strongly prefer ideas and processes which have undergone anonymous peer review in published, refereed journals.

Earlier posts discussed the importance of deduplication in annuity portfolios and pension schemes and some of the issues around the deduplication of names, specifically the use of double metaphone to look through common variant spellings of the surname or family name.

We have already mentioned the problem of duplication in pension schemes and annuities, and as an issue we encounter frequently it is worth talking a little about some technology that can be used to counter the problem.

Deduplication is an essential part of data preparation for statistical modelling. The phenomenon of multiple policies per person is a major issue for annuity portfolios, and arises from life companies' policy-orientated view of the world.

Deduplication is an important step in data preparation for mortality modelling (or any other kind of modelling for that matter). If people in your data set have multiple benefit records, then the crucial independence assumption for statistical modelling in invalidated.