SIR, — Flow refreshing is the wind of sanity with which Henry
Fairlie has blown away newspaper non- sense and political polemics on the subject of the alleged brain drain danger! To support his prospec- tive evaluation of the effect one can cite retrospective evidence. In the last decade of the last century and the first decade of this, there was a one-way traffic of actuaries, members of a highly esoteric profession, from the United Kingdom, and Scotland in par- ticular, to the United States to meet the needs of its rapidly expanding life insurance industry.
And there these bright young men worked out bright new ideas, and probably at an earlier date than they would have had an opportunity to apply them to the test of experience in London or Edinburgh, sorted out the occasional failure from the successes at the expense of the American economy. The ideas which .proved successful in practice were available to, and were adopted by, the English and 'Scottish companies, to their benefit and the benefit of the British public.
Thus, far from being a drain, the traffic resulted in a repayment, at least partial, of the debt which American life insurance initially owed to this country. Many examples could be quoted, but four will suf- fice—premium waiver on total disability, life income benefit as an optional alternative to lump sums assured, group term life insurance and—outstand- ingly—group pension insurance.
Lamb Building. Temple: EC4
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
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