Since the passing of the Life Assurance Companies Act, 1870, the accounts and valuation statements lodged by the various companies with the Board of Trade, in accordance with the requirements of the Act, have been printed and published annually. The valuation returns afford, in the majority of cases, sufficient information to enable an actuary to form a tolerably correct opinion of the financial strength or weakness of the companies to which they refer. In some cases, however, owing to the special character of the facts brought out in the schedules, it is important that the actuary should have before him, when testing the sufficiency of the reserve, some facts, relating to the growth of the business, and the purposes to which the expenditure has been applied, which are not elicited by the Act. For instance, he should know the annual amount of new business which has been transacted, and the annual amount of assurances surrendered and dropped, as well as the claims by death, in order to enable him to form an opinion as to the average duration of the existing policies. He should also have a division of the expenses, showing those applicable to new business and those applicable to the management of business already acquired. An approximation to these particulars may generally be made by the actuary after a study of the reports and other voluntary publications of the companies; so that, on the whole, it may be said that the Act affords to the public the means of judging, through the medium of the actuarial profession, of the relative positions of the various offices as regards stability and profitableness.