Egypt’s first actuarial life table for local insurance players to go live early July

Egypt’s first actuarial life table for life insurance will go live as early as next July, the start of the country’s financial year 2021/2022, an official said on Monday.

Hesham Ramadan, assistant to the Egyptian Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) chairman, further told Amwal Al Ghad that the tables are being finalised as FRA plans to host workshops for the life insurers to learn more about the new system.

Life tables, which are also known as mortality tables or actuarial tables, are based on statistics to calculate the probable life expectancy for people at different ages and the probability of them making it to their next birthday.

The new table is part of efforts to develop Egypt’s life insurance market and increase its efficiency.

Ramadan said life insurance companies in Egypt currently rely on British life tables that are based on data from mid-1950s in pricing insurance products, giving inaccurate and archaic representation of the local life insurance market. This accordingly affects the market’s ability to keep pace with global developments in pricing insurance products.

With the first life table used in Egypt that is based on Egyptian data, insurance companies would better price their products and account for probable future life events to insure.

“Developing this table was a necessity to ensure fair pricing in the market.” Ramadan added.