In this paper we extend the work of Reinhard and Snoussi (2000) by developing a recursive system for finding the distribution of the surplus prior to ruin in a discrete semi-Markov risk model.

The majority of optimal Bonus-Malus Systems (BMS) presented up to now in the actuarial literature assign to each policyholder a premium based on the number of his accidents. In this way a policyholder who had an accident with a small size of loss is penalized unfairly in the same way with a policyholder who had an accident with a big size of loss. Motivated by this, we develop in this paper, the design of optimal BMS with both a frequency and a severity component. The optimal BMS designed are based both on the number of accidents of each policyholder and on the size of loss (severity) for each accident incurred. Optimality is obtained by minimizing the insurer's risk. Furthermore we incorporate in the above design of optimal BMS the important a priori information we have for each policyholder. Thus we propose a generalised BMS that takes into consideration simultaneously the individual's characteristics, the number of his accidents and the exact level of severity for each accident.

In this paper we analyse, in a contingent-claims framework, one of the most common life insurance policies sold in Italy during the last two decades. The policy, of the endowment type, is initially priced as a standard one, given a mortality table and a technical interest rate. Subsequently, at the end of each policy year, the insurance company grants a bonus, which is credited to the mathematical reserve and depends on the performance of a special investment portfolio. More precisely, this bonus is determined in such a way that the total interest rate credited to the insured equals a given percentage (participation level) of the annual return on the reference portfolio and anyway does not fall below the technical rate (minimum interest rate guaranteed, henceforth). Moreover, if the contract is paid by periodical premiums, it is usually stated that the annual premium is adjusted at the same rate of the bonus, and thus the benefit is also adjusted in the same measure. In such policy the variables controlled by the insurance company (control-variables, henceforth) are the technical rate, the participation level and, in some sense, the riskiness of the reference portfolio measured by its volatility. However, as it is intuitive, not all sets of values for these variables give rise to a fair contract, i.e. to a contract priced consistently with the usual assumptions on financial markets and, in particular, with no-arbitrage. We derive then necessary and sufficient conditions under which each control-variable is determined by a fair pricing of the contract, given the remaining two ones.

This paper examines an insurance or risk premium calculation method called the mean-value-distortion pricing principle in the general framework of anticipated utility theory. Then the relationship between comonotonicity and independence is explored. Two types of risk aversion and optimal reinsurance contracts are also discussed in the context of the pricing principle.

For the purpose of Value-at-Risk (VaR) analysis, a model for the return distribution is important because it describes the potential behavior of a financial security in the future. What is primarily, is the behavior in the tail of the distribution since VaR analysis deals with extreme market situations. We analyze the extension of the normal distribution function to allow for fatter tails and for time-varying volatility. Equally important to the distribution function are the associated parameter values. We argue that parameter uncertainty leads to uncertainty in the reported VaR estimates. There is a tradeoff between more complex tail-behavior and this uncertainty. The “best estimate”-VaR should be adjusted to take account of the uncertainty in the VaR. Finally, we consider the VaR forecast for a portfolio of securities. We propose a method to treat the modeling in a univariate, rather than a multivariate, framework. Such a choice allows us to reduce parameter uncertainty and to model directly the relevant variable.

In this paper we consider the problem raised in the Astin Bulletin (1999) by Prof. Benktander at the occasion of his 80th birthday concerning the choice of an appropriate claim size distribution in connection with reinsurance rating problems. Appropriate models for large claim distributions play a central role in this matter. We review the literature on extreme value methodology and consider its use in reinsurance. Whereas the models in extreme-value methods are non-parametric or semi-parametric of nature, practitioners often need a fully parametric model for assessing a portfolio risk both in the tails and in more central portions of the claim distribution. To this end we propose a parametric model, termed the generalised Burr-gamma distribution, which possesses such flexibility. Throughout we consider a Norwegian fire insurance portfolio data set in order to illustrate the concepts. A small sample simulation study is performed to validate the different methods for estimating excess-of-loss reinsurance premiums.

In this paper we will show how to set up a practical bonus-malus system with a finite number of classes. We will use the actual claim amount and claims frequency distributions in order to predict the future observed claims frequency when the new bonus-malus system will be in use. The future observed claims frequency is used to set up an optimal bonus-malus system as well as the transient and stationary distributions of the drivers in the new bonus-malus system. When the number of classes as well as the transition rules of the new bonus-malus system have been adopted, the premium levels are obtained by minimizing a certain distance between the levels of the practical bonus-malus system and the corresponding optimal bonus-malus system. Some iterations are necessary in order to reach stabilization of the future observed claims frequency and the levels of the practical bonus-malus system.

A method of inverting the Laplace transform based on the integration between zeros technique and a simple acceleration algorithm is presented. This approach was designed to approximate ultimate ruin probabilities for Γ-convolutions claim sizes, but it can be also used with other distributions. The stable algorithm obtained yields interval approximations (lower and upper bounds) to any desired degree of accuracy even for very large values of u (1,000,000), initial reserves, without increasing the number of computations. This last fact can be considered an interesting property compared with other recursive methods previously used in actuarial literature or other methods of inverting Laplace transforms.

The purpose of the paper is to use the age of claims in the prediction of risks. A dynamic random effects model on longitudinal count data is presented, and estimated on the portfolio of a major Spanish insurance company. The estimated autocorrelation coefficients of stationary random effects are decreasing. A consequence is that the predictive ability of a claim decreases with the lag between the period of risk prediction and the period of occurrence. There is a wide gap between the long term properties of actuarial and real-world experience rating schemes. This gap can be partly filled if the age of claims is taken into account in the actuarial model.

This paper proposes bonus-malus systems for fleets of vehicles, by using the individual characteristics of both the vehicles and the carriers. Bonus-malus coefficients are computed from the history of claims or from the history of safety offences of the carriers and the drivers. The empirical results are derived from a data set obtained from the Société de l'Assurance Automobile du Québec, the public insurer for bodily injuries and the regulator of road safety.

We are dealing with the ruin probability and the expected ruin time in a two state Markov model where the premium is the reciprocal of an integer and the initial surplus is a multiple of the premium.

Based on the notions of value-at-risk and expected shortfall, we consider two functionals, abbreviated VaR and RaC, which represent the economic risk capital of a risky business over some time period required to cover losses with a high probability. These functionals are consistent with the risk preferences of profit-seeking (and risk averse) decision makers and preserve the stochastic dominance order (and the stop-loss order). Quantitatively, RaC is equal to VaR plus an additional stop-loss dependent term, which takes into account the average amount at loss. Furthermore, RaC is additive for comonotonic risks, which is an important extremal situation encountered in the modeling of dependencies in multivariate risk portfolios. Numerical illustrations for portfolios of gamma distributed risks follow. As a result of independent interest, new analytical expressions for the exact probability density of sums of independent gamma random variables are included, which are similar but different to previous expressions by Provost (1989) and Sim (1992).

In this paper we study a class of Mixed Bivariate Poisson Distributions by extending the Hofmann Distribution from the univariate case to the bivariate case.

We show how to evaluate the bivariate aggregate claims distribution and we fit some insurance portfolios given in the literature.

This study typically extends the use of the Bivariate Independent Poisson Distribution, the Mixed Bivariate Negative Binomial and the Mixed Bivariate Poisson Inverse Gaussian Distribution.

Recently, Wang's premium principle (Wang, 1995, 1996) has been discussed by many authors. Considerable attention has been given to the conditions under which Wang's premium principle can be reduced to the standard deviation premium principle. In this paper, we have got two results on this problem. One is that the natural set is a location-scale family if Wang's premium principle can be reduced to the SD premium principle for all surjective distortions. The other is that the natural set is a location-scale family for all power distortions.

Whittaker graduation is applied to the spatial smoothing of insurance data. Such data (e.g. claim frequency) form a surface over the 2-dimensional geographic domain to which they relate. Observations on this surface are subject to sampling error. They need to be smoothed spatially if a reliable estimate of the underlying surface is to be obtained.

A measure of smoothness of a surface has been defined. This has been incorporated in 2-dimensional Whittaker graduation to effect the necessary smoothing. The details of this are worked out in Section 4. The procedure is illustrated by numerical example in Section 5. The Bayesian interpretation of this form of spatial smoothing is discussed, and used to assist in the selection of the Whittaker relativity constant.

The paper analyses the question: Should an insurance customer carry an occurred loss himself, or should he make a claim to the insurance company? This question is important within bonus-malus contracts with individual experience adjustments of the premium. The analysis model includes a bonus hunger strategy where the customers prefer the most profitable financial alternative, that is, the alternative which represents the lowest rate of interest. Hence the loss of bonus after a claim is calculated as a rate of interest paid from the customer to the insurer. Within this model the paper outlines the existence of a true compensation function and a relative cost function for each customer. A set of properties for bonus-malus contracts are presented and discussed. A concrete example of a bonus-malus system and an insurance compensation function illustrates the theoretical framework in a practical manner.