Select Mortality Table

What Does Select Mortality Table Mean?

A select mortality table is a specialized mortality table that provides statistics on the mortality rates of individuals who have recently purchased life insurance policies. Life insurance companies rely on these tables to accurately determine the pricing of their products. The data from select mortality tables is essential for appropriately calculating premium rates.

Insuranceopedia Explains Select Mortality Table

Typically, individuals who have recently purchased life insurance policies have a lower likelihood of dying compared to those who purchased policies in the more distant past. This is because obtaining life insurance often requires undergoing a physical examination, and approval generally indicates a reasonably good level of health. In contrast, the health status of individuals who purchased life insurance years or even decades ago may have declined over time. Select mortality tables are used to confirm and analyze this trend.

This connection between health at the time of purchase and mortality risk is one reason so many factors go into calculating your life insurance premium beyond just your age. It also explains why policies sold through no medical exam life insurance companies are often priced differently, since insurers have less health data to work with at the time of underwriting.