Description: Presentation on estimating rates of early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. This document contains incident rates, critical illnese insurance information, adverse selection, and more.

Description: Presentation from the 41st Actuarial Research Conference held on August 10-12, 2006 in Montreal, Canada. Fuzzy set theory is incorporated into times series analysis, giving fuzzy parameter estimates of models such as ARMA and GARCH. Examples are given, including returns on a stock and option valuation.

Description: Recently there have been several studies on the dividend payments prior to ruin in various risk models. By employing some new obtained results in the actuarial literature, this presentation analyzes the distribution of the total dividend payments in a risk model with multi-threshold dividend strategy, where the claim arrivals are modeled by a Markovian arrival process [MAP]. A piecewise integro-differential equation in matrix form is derived and solved analytically for the moments of present value of the total dividends prior to ruin. The presentation also discusses the differences between its method and other existing ones. An example with exponentially distributed claim amounts is illustrated numerically.

Description: Many insurers preparing market consistent financial statements encounter the issue of developing volatility assumptions for equity options and guarantees that are longer than any observable market data. This presentation develops a generalization of the classical Black Scholes option pricing model that is consistent with the European CRO Forum's framework for valuing non-hedgeable risk. The presentation argues that, with reasonable parameter choices, the model fits observed volatility surfaces well enough that it can be used to estimate implied volatilities where no market data exists.

Description: Most discussions of actuarial education focus on 'what actuaries need to know'– the knowledge content. This is akin to discussing say mortality by considering just one relevant factor [perhaps age]. Reflecting on more than a quarter of a century teaching thousands of actuarial students in eight countries across many cultures suggests that a curriculum is much more than a list of syllabus topics and that a realistic model of student learning needs to acknowledge many more factors than just the knowledge content and the 'ability' of the student. This paper summarises what the author has learned about learning. From that basis it identifies some challenges for actuarial educators, especially in the areas of the development of students’ skills, the assessment of students’ learning and the 'shape' of actuarial education. The relationship between universities and actuarial bodies is also discussed.

Description: This is a presentation from 45th Actuarial Research Conference, Vancouver, 7/26-28/2010. This presentation introduces the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia’s new methodology for predicting average premium levels. It discusses the premium forecasting using Principal Components Analysis PCA.

Description: Presented at August 2011 46th Actuarial Research Conference. Compression methods improve model run time. This talk discusses compression features, trade-offs, validation, and recommended practice.

Description: This paper proposes a combinatoric approach to express higher moments of the quadratic variation process in terms of higher order variations of the original process and autocorrelations of the original process.

Description: This presentation uses the value-based asset liability management framework to compare the risk-adjusted value of the benefits payable to each cohort.

Description: Behavioral economics is the alternative to the traditional ways (surveys and focus groups) we've been using to try to understand the drivers of customer behavior in the insurance industry. It merges psychology with traditional economic theory, offering insights into individual decision making behavior that go beyond the purely rational model. Within the sphere of health insurance, there are countless behaviors, not just of customers, but of underwriters, medical professionals and claims specialists which may be better explained by behavioral economics. Applying concepts from behavioral economics in live trials it is possible to bring about benefits such as increasing sales and retention rates, improving claims processing and encouraging more accurate disclosure. Swiss Re's global research team partners with its reinsurance clients to incorporate behavioral economics concepts into their letters, websites, forms and scripts by running A/B tests to understand what is driving customer behavior. The team currently has over 100 tests in progress with more than 40 clients, including many in the United States. The partnerships are producing clear business benefits, increasing sales, renewals, health disclosure and turnaround speed for claims payments. These changes are driven by small, inexpensive changes in communications with customers, and we'd like to share some of our insights with you. We've increased upsell rates, disclosure and email open rates, and reduced lapses, turnaround times and appointment no-show rates, to name just a few examples. Behavioral economics is the topic on everyone's lips with insurers and reinsurers all beginning to talk about it in earnest. Our team has been working hard for nearly 4 years and in that time instead of talking, we've been doing, and now we can share with you what a difference behavioral economics can actually make for insurance.