To meet these difficulties in part, various modifications of the flat-rate assessment plan are employed, such as classi fication by age, so that each member pays a flat rate according to age at entry ; or large initiation fees at entry, which form a temporary "reserve" to offset increasing mortality in late years. Finally, the policies may be issued on the natural premium plan, by which the members of each age class pay exactly what the insurance costs for the year. Under this plan the company will remain solvent, but the annual cost to the insured rises so rapidly that many surviving members are forced to drop the insurance in later years.
Assessment insurance is sold by stock companies organ ized for profit, by fraternal orders, and by various types of mutual organizations. Many of the stock companies have had a dismal history of hardship to surviving members and of eventual failure. They are reforming or disappearing under the influence of hostile legislation resulting from a better popular knowledge of insurance principles. The fraternal orders have more than ten million policies in force and in comes totaling more than $180,000,000. They combine insur
ance with other objects of a benevolent and social character. With good management, a favorable death rate, and very low expenses, some of them have provided protection at very low rates for many years. Many in the past have failed, with disappointment and disaster to the older members. Still others are struggling with difficulties that presage dis solution. Most of them now have some, though inadequate, reserve accumulations, and some have so improved their methods that they begin to resemble reserve companies. The assessment companies average $1.37 reserves per $100 of insurance in force, and get 10 per cent of their total in comes from their funded investments. Even with the favor able conditions under which fraternal orders conduct their insurance business, they eventually must fail unless they adopt rates and policies based upon adequate reserves. Many thousands of present members are paying for insurance at rates that will not suffice to meet the future losses. The assessment plan fails to eliminate the one great risk, that of leaving the survivors without insurance in advancing years.