International Nurses Day

On International Nurses Day and the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale (12 May 2020), Kendra Felisky of Marcuson Consulting celebrates the actuarial skills of one of the world’s most famous nurses. Florence Nightingale – A Pioneer of Data Visualisation and Handwashing… oh, and that nursing thing. It’s a situation familiar to all actuaries. You know… Continue reading>

Gibraltar SFCR review webinar

It is great to have held our first Gibraltar SFCR review webinar recently.  Huge thanks to our guest speaker Joe Perdoni of the GFSC and Kathryn Morgan for chairing the seminar.  Kendra Felisky, FCAS, CERA presented our quantitative analysis and Alex Marcuson shared strategies firms can adopt to enhance their risk processes and reporting. The… Continue reading>

Covid-19: Issues for Non-life Firms to Consider

by Alex Marcuson I have been thinking about how Covid-19 may affect the non-life insurance and reinsurance industry over the last week and thought I would share some observations. While there remains some uncertainty in both the short and long-term, emerging sickness and mortality rates suggest that this will be a disruptive rather than calamitous… Continue reading>

Dear CEO and Dear Chief Actuary letters 2019

At a recent meeting of the London Market Actuaries’ Group (LMAG) we attended, James Orr, Chief Actuary - General Insurance at the PRA, with his colleagues Cassandra Archer and Elena Papastylianou, delivered a PRA Update presentation on the recent “Dear Chief Actuary” and “Dear CEO” letters*. We think the contents of these letters should be… Continue reading>

Proxy capital modelling in general insurance

Despite recent computational advances, internal/economic capital models remain time-consuming to run and often highly complex. We are currently researching into the use of proxy models in general insurance capital modelling, including a study into current market practice and evaluation of common techniques.  We are planning to present our results and findings at actuarial conferences later… Continue reading>

Cyber – a new type of risk or more of the same?

by Alex Marcuson This question occurred to me at a seminar I attended recently. The speaker was arguing that cyber was a new category of insurance, distinct from traditional property and casualty insurance classes. On reflection, I felt unconvinced, but I thought it was worth setting out some of the arguments both ways. Why is… Continue reading>

Peril-based reserving and claims simulation

Alex Marcuson presented on the work that his Peril-based reserving working party has been carrying out.  This presentation was given at the annual GIRO Conference, this year held during September in Dublin. After providing a recap of some of the material delivered at previous GIRO Conferences, and the challenges that had been identified at that… Continue reading>

Learn to be part of the Machine Revolution

Alex Marcuson presented on machine learning at the annual GIRO Conference, this year held during September in Dublin. Speaking together with Alan Chalk, the popular workshop provided an introduction for actuarial newcomers to this field. The workshop provided a practical example of decision tree tools to analyse sample text. Using speeches given by US presidential… Continue reading>

PPO Liabilities: modelling mortality risks

There are a lot of uncertainties inherent in the valuation and capital modelling of Periodical Payment Order (“PPO”) liabilities.  Not only is there no perfect hedge for the inflation indices applied to them, there is also very limited data upon which to base mortality models. While much has been written on the challenges presented by… Continue reading>