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Highly Penetrant Genetic Disorders: An Atlas for Critical Illness Insurance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

A. S. Macdonald  and
S. Y. Yang
A. S. Macdonald
Affiliation:
Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, U.K., Tel: +44(0)131-451-3209, Fax: +44(0)131-451-3249, Email: A.S.Macdonald@ma.hw.ac.uk
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Abstract

For estimates of critical illness (CI) insurance premiums in the presence of a known mutation leading to a genetic disorder, the key quantity is the penetrance, that is the probability q(x) that the disease has developed by age x. This function is often estimated in the genetics literature, though typically with large confidence intervals. In this paper we suggest that the main features of real penetrance functions can be represented reasonably well by simple one-parameter families of functions, which can be scaled to fit the age range and lifetime penetrance. This gives a simple, direct, pragmatic way to obtain quick estimates of CI premium rates from published penetrance estimates, and also some indicative bounds for such premium rates, which are useful since confidence intervals usually cannot be estimated. To aid this process, as a short-cut to the solution of Thiele's equations in a multiple-state model, we give extensive tables in another report (Macdonald & Yang, 2003).

Keywords

Critical Illness InsuranceGeneticsMutation PenetrancePremium Rating
Type
Sessional meetings: papers and abstracts of discussions
Information
British Actuarial Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , 01 October 2003 , pp. 875 - 901
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 2003

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