Question 20.20

20.20 Life insurance. You might sell insurance to a 21-year-old friend. The probability that a man aged 21 will die in the next year is about 0.0008. You decide to charge $2000 for a policy that will pay $1,000,000 if your friend dies.

  1. (a) What is your expected profit on this policy?

  2. (b) Although you expect to make a good profit, you would be foolish to sell a single policy only to your friend. Why?

  3. (c) A life insurance company that sells thousands of policies, on the other hand, would do very well selling policies on exactly these same terms. Explain why.