I think you might be thinking the 576k is an expected reserve? In profit testing we work out expected reserves at the end of each year by multiplying the reserve we would hold if a policy is in force at the end of the year by the probability that the policy remains in-force for the year in question. Mortality profit questions are based on actual reserves a company would hold if all lives survived.
In regular mortality profit questions we do S-(t+1V + R) for one policy and then we end up scaling it for the whole portfolio by multiplying by n, the number of policies, for expected death strain and actual death strain. We work out t+1V as if the life IS alive at time t+1 and then take the expected present value of the future benefits + expenses - premiums at that time. Our death strain at risk then represents the extra money we would need to find (or money we can release) if the life dies during the year. If we're thinking about mortality and a death benefit then one of two things happen at the end of the year. If the life survives we set up the reserve for them, if they die we have to pay out the sum assured. E.g if t+1V=10,000 and S=70,000 then when a life dies we make a 60,000 loss because we have to pay out 60,000 more than the reserve. We would have set up a reserve of 10k but now we have to pay out 70k.
Over a portfolio of policies expected death strain is DSAR * n * q_x+t = (S*n - t+1V*n - R*n) * qx
The bit in the brackets is total sum assured - total reserve we would hold if everyone survives - total survival benefit at end of year.
Total sum assured is given in the question but total reserve we would hold if everyone survives is missing. We have the reserve for all policies that DID SURVIVE so it's missing the reserves for the two policies where the policyholder dies. So we manually add their reserves in and then we have the total reserve that would be held at the end of the year if all lives survive.
We can perhaps use a silly example to work out why not adding the reserve in would be wrong. Imagine we have two policies. One has a sum assured of 200k over the year and t+1V=120k, the other has a sum assured of 20k and t+1V = 5k. Now if the first policyholder dies then at the end of the year we would only hold the reserve for the policyholder who is alive. So the actual reserve held at the end of the year is 5k. You might then calculate the total death strain as 220k-5k = 215k. This suggests that if both lives die we make a 215k loss. However, that's because we've ignored the reserve we would have held if the first policyholder survived. In actual fact the total death strain is 220k - 125k = 95k.
The expected death strain would be 95k x q_x+t.
The actual death strain is the 80k extra we've had to pay out over the reserve for the first policyholder.
Does this make it any clearer?
Joe