Description: The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of soft computing applications in actuarial science. Soft computing refers to modes of computing in which precision is traded for tractability, robustness and ease of implementation.

Description: This brief article describes an actuarial model of continuing care retirement communities [CCRC] that was developed. The model uses a set of multiple-decrement, multi-life, multi-status functions to describe the population of a CCRC.

Description: Multiple decrement theory traditionally is based on the assumption that competing causes of decrement are stochastically independent even though this assumption is usually not true in reality. This paper presents some fundamental results towards a dependent decrement theory. First, the author shows how to model dependence with copula functions, then he presents a theorem that characterizes the mathematical relationship between the crude and net probabilities when the decrements are dependent, and finally he applies the results by examining the effect of removing cancer from the United States population when cancer is correlated with the other causes of death. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994, VOL. 1.

Description: This paper introduces actuaries to the concept of 'copulas,' a tool for understanding relationships among multivariate outcomes. A copula is a function that links univariate marginals to their full multivariate distribution. Recently, there has been a rapidly developing literature on the statistical properties and applications of copulas. This paper explores some of these practical applications, including estimation of joint life mortality and multidecrement models. In addition, the paper describes basic properties of copulas, their relationships to measures of dependence and several families of copulas that have appeared in the literature. This paper will also be useful to those who wish to use copulas for statistical inference. Statistical inference procedures are illustrated using insurance company data on losses and expenses. For this data, the paper shows how to fit copulas and describes their usefulness by pricing a reinsurance contract and estimating expenses for pre-specified losses.

Description: In this paper a C-1 bond risk analysis is used as an example in a presentation of a generalized approach to solvency risk quantification. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 3.

Description: The goal of this paper was to establish the main results of assigning internal rates of retum to arbitrary financial projects in a more general setting than that found in the theory of Teichrow, Robichek, and Montalbano. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1993, VOL. 1

Description: The implementation of credibility theories is often hampered by the computational difficulties of evaluating integrals such as in Bayes' theorem. This paper presents a sampling-resampling technique which allows the assessment of the posterior distribution for arbitrary likelihood function and prior distribution. Actuarial Research Clearing House 1992, VOL. 1.

Description: In this paper some general properties of compound nonstationary Poisson processes are discussed as well as the possible shapes of the intensity function. A decomposition of the accumulated claims as a sum of independent compound Poisson sums is shown. An embedded discrete risk model is introduced. It is shown that ruin probabilities and maximal losses for the nonstationary risk model find lower bounds with the embedded discrete model. From Actuarial Research Clearing House 1994 VOL. 1.

Description: This is the abstract of a paper that considers a general two-country model of exchange rate dynamics in which interest rates are stochastic. Special cases of this model are also illustrated in which the, interest rates are constant in each country and when interest rates are Gaussian in each country. This model provides an important tool for actuaries dealing with global risk which includes valuation of currency derivatives [forwards, futures, options and swaps], frequency/severity claims model with exchange rate risk in the claim size, valuation of individual insurance contracts written in foreign currency, and valuation of general interest sensitive claims in foreign currency.