Graduation of term assurance data using frailty approach

Frailty models have been used in literature to account for heterogeneity among insureds in-terms of mortality. In this article, we compare the gamma and the non-central gamma as frailty distributions with the exponentiated exponential and exponentiated Weibull as baseline hazards. We adopt a fully Bayesian approach to calibrate the baselines based on crude mortality rates from a major Kenyan insurer. Comparing the gamma-exponentiated Weibull with the non-central gamma-exponentiated Weibull models shows that the non-central gamma provides a good fit to the real life data-set and is therefore recommended for valuation.