North American Actuarial Journal Recognizes Best Paper of 2024
Winning Paper Tackles Antidiscrimination Insurance Pricing
Chicago, IL, Oct. 6, 2025—The editorial board of the North American Actuarial Journal (NAAJ), the scholarly journal of the Society of Actuaries (SOA), announces the recipient of the NAAJ Annual Prize for the best paper published in 2024, “Antidiscrimination Insurance Pricing: Regulations, Fairness Criteria, and Models,” coauthored by Fei Huang, Associate Professor, School of Risk and Actuarial Studies, UNSW Business School, and Xi Xin, Ph.D. candidate, School of Risk and Actuarial Studies, UNSW Business School.
The winning article introduces fairness criteria for insurance pricing as a regression model, aligns them with anti-discrimination regulations, and applies them to various pricing models. The authors’ empirical analysis then compares model outcomes based on a fairness/accuracy trade-off, highlighting which models struck the best balance between fairness in pricing and predictive accuracy.
The authors of the winning paper receive a monetary prize and a commemorative plaque, and the paper is available online for free for a year. Since 1983, the NAAJ editorial board has annually selected an outstanding paper based on research quality, scientific impact, and societal reach.
“The potential for unfair bias resulting from opaque AI models and the use of Big Data in underwriting and pricing is a crucial issue the insurance industry and regulators have been striving to address. This year’s winning paper enhances the understanding and reduction of indirect discrimination in insurance and suggests areas for future research to build on its work,” stated NAAJ Editor-in-Chief Montserrat Guillen Estany, PhD, MA, MSc.
To gain insight into the avoidance of indirect discrimination in the pricing of insurance products, explore the fairness criteria and model outcome comparisons in the prize-winning NAAJ article: “Antidiscrimination Insurance Pricing: Regulations, Fairness Criteria, and Models” now publicly available.
About the North American Actuarial Journal
The North American Actuarial Journal (NAAJ) is the Society of Actuaries’ premier publication and only refereed journal. The SOA partners with Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group to publish the NAAJ, which serves the international, scientific, academic, business and governmental communities.
About the Society of Actuaries
With roots dating back to 1889, the Society of Actuaries (SOA) is the world’s largest actuarial professional organization, with more than 34,000 actuaries as members in over 100 countries worldwide. The SOA’s purpose is to empower its members to drive solutions to life’s financial risks. To learn more, visit soa.org.