ADJUSTING LIFE TABLES TO INCORPORATE PERTINENT PERSONAL PROFILE INFORMATION Patrick L. Brockett and Samuel Cox* Section 1 Introduction and Summary The purpose of this paper is to show how to use personal information such as medical history, family characteristics, insurance characteristics, etc. in a logical statistical fashion for the purpose of modifying an existing mortality table to reflect the collected underwriting information. The technique presented is applicable even when the relevant information has only been gathered on a relatively small group of individuals, as well as cases in which more extensive experience has been gathered. Consequently, some smaller scale medical studies can be made useful for actuarial calculations. Additional benefits of the proposed technique are: i) It uses information in all ages to gather information about the effect of the measured underwriting characteristics. In a sense it smooths the data over age as well as covariate experience groups. ii) It modifies the entire standard mortality table in light of the pertinent information, and does not smooth the table by ad hoc ratio smoothing at specific ages. iii) There is a firm statistical foundation for the technique. Accordingly, inference can be made about covariate experience effect upon mortality. Thisisimpossible using the traditional actuarial methods which ignore the random aspects of the mortality curve adjustments, i.e., that the information gathered is sample information. iv) Confidence intervals for the mortality table adjustments may be made, allowing risk protection in calculation of annuities and life *Associate Professor of Finance and Actuarial Science at The University of Texas at Austin. Professor Brockett is also with Applied Research Labs, University of Texas. This work supported in part by the office of Naval Research N0014-81-K-0145. 47