Page 82 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

He had begun his remarks by asking how pension business all originated, and perhaps he

might conclude them by asking how it would all end. If all the benefits were unified, all
the liabilities amalgamated and all the assets of the local government authorities

dissipated, what next? That was dealt with in paragraph 13 of the paper and in the
following paragraphs. Apparently a whole lot of other groups—the Civil Service, and so

on—were to be put into the common pool. Would it stop there? If the Government had
taken £40,000,000 and put it in the till, what might happen to the £2,000,000,000 (or

thereabouts) of funds which had been so carefully accumulated by the life assurance

companies? In case there might be anybody present—though he did not think that there
was—who might be tempted to say that the fate of those local government funds was no

particular concern of his, he would quote the terrible words of John Donne: ' Any man's

death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde ; and therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for Thee.'

The Chairman (Mr W. F. Gardner), before asking the author to reply, said that he would
like to make one human, and therefore actuarial, point. As actuaries, they might well be

thought to be close to their actuarial and financial problems, but remote from the
individual. They necessarily dealt with aggregations of numbers, and therefore in the

minds of those who might later read the paper, and to a lesser degree of those who might

read their discussions, they might seem remote ; yet implicit in Mr Robb's paper, and
sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit in the discussion that evening, had been that

concern for the individual, and he felt it right that he should emphasize that. He had been
particularly glad to hear Mr Marples say that the object of a pension fund was to pay

pensions, and that the pensioner needed his pension to buy food and clothes. There was
danger in remoteness. He was sure that the members would wish to express to Mr Robb

their appreciation of the paper which he had submitted and of the vigorous discussion

which it had produced.
Mr A. C. Robb, in reply, expressed his thanks for the way in which the paper had been

received. He had tried to write a paper which he hoped might be provocative, and in view

of the discussion he thought he could claim to have been successful in that. As Mr
Gunlake had pointed out, it had been necessary to set out the history in some detail, and

he had had to relegate that to the appendices. Having done that he had had space in the