1990 Commissioners Mortality Table?

[Guest Actuary Bill]

I am reviewing a pension valuation where the mortality table is described as the "1990 Commissioners Mortality Table" in the assumptions section. Is anbody familiar with this table? I hear commissioners table and think of a table used in the development of reserves in the insurance industry. If this is the case, I have a hard time understanding how a credentialed actuary can justify using it for a pension valuation.

Upon a review of the sample q's in the report, it appears that it may be the "90CM" mortality table. Apparently, this mortality table is "for use in computing (among other things) the charitable deduction arising from a contribution to a charitable remainder trust, charitable lead trust, charitable gift annuity, or pooled-income fund where the term of the agreement is measured by one or more lives." Is anybody familiar with this table and its appropriateness for determining pension annuity liabilities?

[david rigby]

Hmmm. Often (but not always) the word "commissioners" is short hand for "Commissioner's Standard Ordinary" (but you already knew that), and refers to a table used for life insurance reserving. IMHO, it is not appropriate to use that type of table to measure pension liability. However, there may be other tables that use the word "commissioners".

http://mort.soa.org/

The Society of Actuaries maintains a great database of tables. I could not find a 1990 table with "CSO" or "commissioners" or "CM" or "charitable" in the name.

[SoCalActuary]

For remainder interests in valuation of estates, this table was the standard of measurement.

5-1-1999 to 4-30-2009 90CM § 7520 rates See Publications 1457, 1458, 1459 (7-1999 version)

It was replaced for the 2000-2010 period by the 2000CM table.

[eeyore]

CM = Census Mortality. This was a table based on the 1990 US Census. (To verify, qx at 37 = .001969.) I wouldn't use it for a pension valuation, although I haven't compared the q's with a more standard table to see how different it is. It's a unisex table for one thing. The original research is here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/lifetables/life89_1_1.pdf. The life table is on page 12 of the document (labeled as page 6).