Defined terms for the annuity market and lifetime income landscape.
Tontine payout mechanics are the structural rules that determine how a tontine pool's income is calculated, distributed, and adjusted over time — how pool assets and composition translate into per-survivor payments and how the share released as members die is redistributed.
Tontine pool governance is the set of rules, decision rights, and structural features that determine how a specific tontine pool operates — membership and closure rules, the redistribution rule, exit and liquidity provisions, adjustment rules under stress, and dispute resolution.
The tontine scandal refers to the early-20th-century US life insurance controversy — most directly tied to the 1905 Armstrong Investigation of the New York life insurance industry — that led to the suppression of tontine-structured policies in the United States.
The tontine versus annuity comparison is the structural comparison between a tontine — a direct pooled arrangement with visible redistribution and member governance — and a commercial annuity — an insurer-intermediated arrangement with invisible redistribution and insurer governance.
Underwriting in the longevity context is the process by which an issuer of a lifetime income arrangement assesses each prospective participant's expected longevity through age, sex, health status, family history, and other factors, and assigns the participant to a priced risk class.
