Description: This is the abstract for the paper on optimal reversible annuities to minimize the probability of lifetime ruin.

Description: In this paper, fuzzy sets - collections of objects whose boundaries are not precisely defined - are used to model the selection process in group health insurance. Both single and multiple options plans are discussed. Discussions of this paper are included.

Description: A presentation on the principle of equivalent utility from the 2001 ARCH. Contains both the static and dynamic model as well as examples with exponential utility.

Description: Under Yaari's dual theory of risk, this paper determines the equilibrium separating contracts for high and low risks in a competitive insurance market, in which risks are defined only by their expected losses, that is, a high risk is a risk that has a greater expected loss than a low risk. The authors also determine the pooling equilibrium contract when insurers are assumed non-myopic. Utility theory generally predicts that optimal insurance indemnity payments are nonlinear functions of the underlying loss due to the nonlinearity of agents' utility functions. Under Yaari's dual theory, the authors show that under mild technical conditions the indemnity payment is a piecewise linear function of the loss, a common property of insurance coverages.

Description: From a session at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999 Presenters offer a preview of an actual Course 7 dealing with applied modeling.

Description: In performing Bayesian analysis of insurance losses, one usually chooses a parametric conditional loss distribution for each risk and a parametric prior distribution to describe how the conditional distributions vary across the risks. Young [1997] applies techniques from nonparametric density estimation to estimate the prior and uses the estimated model to calculate the predictive mean of future claims given past claims. A shortcoming of this method is that, in estimating the prior, one assumes the average claim amount equals the conditional mean. This is the abstract of a paper that considers a class of priors obtained by perturbing the one determined nonparametrically, as in Young [1997]. The authors thereby reflect the uncertainty in the prior that arises from the randomness in the claim data. They then calculate intervals for the corresponding predictive means. They illustrate their method with data from Dannenburg et. al. [1996] and compare the intervals of the predictive means with nonparametric confidence intervals.

Description: Article from The Actuary June 1993 – Volume 27, No. 6. A Humorous take about health insurance for pets

Description: This abstract introduces the paper which uses credibility theory to analyze policyholder persistency. It is assumed that persistency depends on the difference between the premium charge and anticipated claims.

Description: We apply decision theory to develop a credibility formula that minimizes a loss function that is a linear combination of a squared-error term and a second-derivative term. The squared-error term measures the accuracy of the estimator, while the second-derivative term constrains the estimator to be close to linear.

Description: From a session at the Spring regional meeting of the Society of Actuaries held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 24-25, 1999 Year 2000 and Beyond: Society of Actuaries New Course: Applied Modeling Demonstration Charts 5 & 6 from that presentation