actuarial

American  

[ak-choo-air-ee-uhl] / ˌæk tʃuˈɛər i əl /

Rarely actuarian

adjective

1. Insurance. relating to or being the science of computing premium rates, risks, dividends, etc., according to probabilities based on statistics.

   Over this period, the fund earned a return of 14.37%, exceeding the actuarial assumed return of 7.70%.

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Other Word Forms

• actuarially adverb

Etymology

Origin of actuarial

First recorded in 1850–55; actuar(y) ( def. ) + -ial ( def. )

Explanation

Actuarial data are the statistics used to calculate various sorts of risk that insurance companies insure people against. If you want to know how likely it is for your car to be stolen, there is surely some actuarial data that could give you an answer. Actuarial science includes statistics, probability, mathematics, and economics, and the people trained in it are called actuaries. When you buy a homeowner's insurance policy, for instance, the insurance company calculates how much they’ll charge you by consulting the actuarial data, which tells them how likely it is that something will happen to your house (based on how old your house is, where it’s located, the building materials, your credit rating, and lots of other factors).

Example Sentences

A man doing the same thing would collect a bit more per year, because the actuarial tables say he isn’t likely to live as long.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 26, 2026

Last Wednesday, the FHA released its annual actuarial report showing that the ratio stood at 11.47%.

From Barron's • Jan. 7, 2026

Indeed, cutting eligibility for disability could result in more disabled workers claiming retirement benefits early, actuarial experts note, which would only increase pressure on the retirement system.

From Salon • Nov. 2, 2025

A spokeswoman for the insurance giant said the governor’s criticism “misrepresents the rigorous actuarial analysis that supports our filings.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 20, 2025

The authorities were extremely strict about this, and the only kind of publication that would pass muster might be a quarterly on actuarial science for a prisoner studying accounting.

From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela