If Carlsberg provided actuarial advice,  we're sure it would be the best. One thing they would be bound to tell  us is that noone on Earth knows what the future holds. That actuaries  sometimes pretend they have some special talent in this area is bizarre.

In particular, we don't know when, in which direction, how far or for how  long, financial conditions will change. Demographic changes tend to be  rather smoother so there is reasonably more room for good guessing about the future than for the financial elements.

Even so, we need to  do our best, trying to make assessments over what can be very long  periods, such as 50 years or even longer. Basing assumptions for the  very long-term upon short-term statistics seems extremely odd. On the  other hand, for very long periods, there may have been major structural  shifts, making it difficult to justify using few very long periods for  analysis. Accordingly, we think it is entirely appropriate to compromise with as many decent time chunks, lasting say 15 years, as we can find, even if they overlap.

Further, using scalars to represent many  future possibilities provides stakeholders with no idea of the  variations; the certainty offered is non-existent. This is explored further here.