Description: Reserving and ratemaking calculations are vital to how insurance companies perform financially. Current-day practices for predicting future loss ratio or pure premiums for reserving and ratemaking rates are not based on low prediction errors—mean squared error (MSE) criterion. This report provides mathematically optimal weights that lead to minimum MSE prediction errors, and the formulas are validated using retro-testing with real-world datasets. In this report, two main theorems are discussed, each addressing prediction of future loss ratio or pure premium and improving upon current practices for how rates and reserves are calculated.

Description: Feature articles discussing the risks created by climate change.

Description: Feature articles discussing the risks created by climate change.

Description: The Spatial Hazards Events and Losses Database for the United States (SHELDUS) provides county-level data for direct economic losses due to natural hazards from 1960 to the present.

Description: An update of recent past and upcoming professional development opportunities that have relevance to general insurance actuaries.

Description: This report identifies and makes recommendations regarding possible exposure measures for pricing and analyzing the risks in cyber insurance. Cyber insurance is an insurance product that is designed to provide protection against the financial consequences of a failure or compromise of an organization’s information system as a result of a cyber event.

Description: The cyber insurance market looks like it’s growing—rapidly, in fact. However, there’s more to the cyber insurance market than the outward appearance of strong growth. Worldwide aggregate premium’s upward trend may even be cause for alarm. The increase in premium against a flat rate of insured exposure is a key sign that the market could turn from growth to constriction if a solution isn’t found in the near future. If the cyber insurance sector hopes to reach such lofty goals as exceeding $30 billion in global premium by 2028, it’s going to need more capital. Whether directly into the insurance sector or via support from reinsurance and retrocession, fresh capital should help insurers achieve greater market penetration, build a broader foundation for ongoing expansion, and chart a course for long-term sustainable profitable growth. The same sources capital insurers have used since the early days of the market won’t be enough, though. Thankfully, the insurance linked securities (ILS) market seems poised to help, particularly with several promising recent transactions. New sources of capital could bolster the foundation for future cyber re/insurance growth.

Description: Actuaries can play an active role in social impact toby helping vulnerable communities access otherwise inaccessible insurance that can help increase their climate change resilience and improve their living conditions by lowering the risks that they face.

Description: The Risks Analytics Symposium 2022: Actuarial Perspectives on Climate Change was a hybrid half-day event where university students, as well as academics and industry professionals, had the opportunity to network and view live discussion panels in-person at UIUC or virtually through Zoom.

Description: The aim of this project has three aspects: (1) providing a comprehensive literature review on telematics car driving data analytics; (2) developing various visual tools and a data cleaning procedure for telematics data; and (3) extracting risk factors from individual trips and improving classic classification ratemaking models with those risk factors.