3 items found for ""
- Using Historical Data to Settle a Reinsurance Payment Dispute
By Beyers Strydom. These data points don’t lie... What happens when an insurance company gets accused of underpaying its reinsurer? Well, after you’ve let the situation cool down, you go look at the data. Or at least, that’s what I did as an aspiring actuary. I recently worked with a client who wanted to reconcile premiums paid to their reinsurer and settle an underpayment dispute. My client felt like they had been paying the right amounts each year and didn’t want to fork out thousands of additional dollars (these treaties can get quite big at times). The problem was that their data was not well maintained and they had no means of checking whether the premiums they paid to the reinsurer were correct. Without the necessary evidence, their case wasn’t very strong. That’s where my expertise came in. To help them build their case, I developed a model to calculate monthly reinsurance premiums for each policyholder throughout the period of the reinsurance treaty. But it wasn’t all plain sailing. The terms of the reinsurance treaties were subject to change over time, which meant that the reinsurance premium calculator had to dynamically allow for these changes. I ended up building several individual calculators to process the monthly data and calculate the reinsurance premiums. It was an extensive project that involved data cleaning, model development and extensive back testing - checking whether the models were predicting the premiums correctly by comparing the calculated premiums against the historical data. In the end, using my model and its outputs, my client and its reinsurer found a way to settle their differences. All’s well that ends well and this just shows again that the data doesn’t lie. #Insurance #Reinsurance #Data
- Income Protection (IP) Insurance
By Tanaka Makuvaza. Famous author and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, once remarked, “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are you busy about?” To that point, ZAQ Actuaries is pleased to share some work that we performed for one of our clients last year. Our client wanted to investigate the performance of their income protection business. In particular, they wanted to understand how the actual experience of the book was developing against the expected experience. Income protection (IP) insurance, also known as permanent health insurance (PHI), pays you, the policyholder, a regular income if you can't continue working due to disability or illness. Payment continues until you return to work or you retire. The benefit amount is usually limited to a portion (60-80%) of your full salary. There are also support and assistance programs to help you recover to full health. In this way, you receive the necessary protection against unexpected risks. At the same time, the insurance company reduces its exposure to instances where clients are better off claiming benefits instead of returning to work. To monitor how claims payments are developing, the insurance company must understand (1) the incidence rates i.e. how many policyholders are moving from being healthy to being sick or becoming disabled and (2) the termination rates i.e. how many of the sick/disabled lives subsequently get healthy again and return to work. Other factors such as mortality rates and lapse rates are also important in this analysis, but they have a smaller impact on the expected claims of the book. Our analysis involved looking at the client’s historical claims data and linking their incidence experience (healthy to sick) with their termination experience (sick to healthy) – two data sets that were stored separately. We could then look at the overall experience according to factors like claims frequency & severity, age, gender, occupation, and premium income. By analysing the data, we found patterns, trends, and anomalies within the data that clarified the divergence between the expected and actual experience. We adopted the powerful and user-friendly analytics tool, Power BI, for our analysis. This software is easy to integrate with a wide range of data sources so we could plug it directly into our client’s existing system. The main benefit of this tool is that you can link different tables and data sets. This was the key ingredient in understanding their overall experience. Using Power BI’s drag-and-drop functionality and interactive visualisations, we created insightful graphs, dashboards and reports that were easy to interpret by the end user. That’s a wrap on another successful project, where we gave our client insights into the performance of their business quickly and cost-effectively. Or as Thoreau would see it - staying busy doing meaningful work. #ActuarialOutsourcing #BusinessIntelligence #DataAnalytics
- 𝐔𝐧𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐎𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠
By Chris van Wyk. In the ever-evolving landscape of business, strategic decision-making that balances risk and reward is the key to success. Enter actuarial outsourcing - a game-changer for insurance and consulting firms who want to enhance their financial strategies without breaking the bank. In this post, we'll explore three compelling benefits of embracing actuarial outsourcing. 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 Running an in-house actuarial team can become quite resource intensive. From salaries and benefits to ongoing training and infrastructure, the costs can add up faster than you can say "ROI." Actuarial outsourcing flips the script by allowing you to access top-notch expertise without the hefty price tag. Outsourcing firms specialise in actuarial work. Dealing with actuarial and insurance problems daily, they have honed their skills and streamlined their processes to deliver high-quality results in short turnaround times. In addition, they have already done the groundwork of hiring, training, and managing full-time actuarial teams. By acquiring their services, you can tap into their expertise and kickstart projects immediately without having to assemble and manage your own team. 𝐅𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 In the business world, adaptability is the name of the game. Markets shift, regulations change, and new competitors enter the market. Actuarial outsourcing provides the flexibility and scalability that an in-house team may struggle to match. Outsourced actuarial consultants are, due to the nature of their work, at the coalface of the changes and updates in the insurance industry. When you outsource, you can tap into these up-to-date skills immediately. You can also easily scale up or down based on your business needs. Whether you're launching a new product, expanding into new markets, or navigating unforeseen challenges, outsourcing allows you to bring in the relevant expertise at the desired scale at the right time. 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 Actuarial work isn't just about numbers; it requires a specific set of skills. Outsourcing firms have specialists who have mastered the intricacies of different sectors. By outsourcing, you gain access to this specialised knowledge. Whether you're in insurance, pensions, or financial planning, you can tap into the actuarial expertise needed to navigate the unique challenges of your industry. This focused knowledge can provide an edge when it comes to designing innovative financial products, managing risks, and staying one step ahead of the competition. In conclusion, actuarial outsourcing is not only a cost-cutting measure, it's a strategic move that can propel your business to new heights. #ActuarialOutsourcing #FinancialStrategies #BusinessOptimisation