Per-policy data submission

Background

In recent years, the CMI has been consulting with data contributors on the most fundamental review ever undertaken of the data submitted to the Mortality investigations, in particular moving to per-policy data. The principal aims of this move are:

• to produce more reliable results as the data can be more thoroughly checked;
• to increase data volumes by making data provision easier;
• to produce more valuable analyses, including by new risk factors.

The initiative to switch data collection for the life office mortality investigations to a per-policy basis is vital to the continued success of the CMI. The changes will involve considerable effort from offices too and we would like to thank data contributors in advance in anticipation of their support.

What is changing?

The change involves collecting an individual record per life for each in-force policy and claim, replacing the current tabulation of data by age and duration. This will put the mortality investigations on a similar footing to all the other investigations run by the CMI. However the opportunity has been taken to review other aspects of the data collected and the outcome should be substantially improved analyses. These enhancements also benefit the Critical Illness investigation so the data requirements for both are incorporated into the coding guide.

Working paper 19

Working paper 19, and the accompanying coding guide, which were published in December 2005:

• summarised the responses received to Working paper 13;
• explained the changes made as a result of the consultation exercise; and
• set out a number of areas for further consideration.

Timetable

The CMI requests that offices supply per-policy data for Mortality at the earliest opportunity using the latest version of the Coding Guide. The CMI will cease accepting scheduled data for the mortality investigations in due course, but in the meantime we are happy to accept mortality data in the scheduled format from existing data contributors.

For the latest information…

It was anticipated that the Coding Guide would require further clarification as offices began to submit data using this guide, and indeed this is now happening. The latest version of the Coding Guide and a summary of changes to the original version issued in December 2005 can be found by clicking here.

Some of the questions that have been asked so far – and the answers! – can be found by clicking here. If you would like to receive e-mail notifications when these pages are updated, please e-mail mortality@cmilimited.co.uk with a message title "Request for per-policy updates"”.