As 2022 was drawing to a close, insurers across the UK were starting to look at their results, keeping their fingers, toes and everything else that they could, crossed in the hope that December would fizzle out in a whimper.
But alas it was not to be...
Read more 
Actuarial big bucks
What use statisticians and actuaries when the world is being transformed by modern data-analysis techniques? What hope for clunking humans in the era of Big Data (Facebook sells data which influences US presidential elections), of Artificial Intell...
Read more 
Pricing triptych – Part 3: Four fallacies about cat pricing
Catastrophes – natural events where one “system” (wind, earthquake etc) causes multiple insurance claims in one go – are difficult. Much else in insurance pricing is subject to conceptually simple averaging-over-time, but cats are different...
Read more 
Pricing triptych – Part 2: Four considerations on pricing strategy
In part 1 of this triptych on insurance pricing we looked at Technical Price (TP): what must be covered over the long run to make reasonable profits. I finished that note by considering TP in the context of the market. Here, I take this theme fur...
Read more 
Pricing triptych – Part 1: The four fundamentals of pricing
This is the first of three notes on insurance pricing. It’s a big topic and warrants a bit of attention. Calibrant oversees the performance of MGA businesses and as such strongly influences the pricing. While quite distant from the coal face,...
Read more 
In data we trust (so make sure it’s right)
On 26th September 1983, at the height of the Cold War, Soviet missile monitoring picked up apparent signs of five nuclear missiles launched from the US. Retaliation was the default planned reaction.
Thankfully Stansilav Petrov, the Lieutenant Col...
Read more