A Credibility Framework for Gauging Fire Classification Experience

The need for "credibility" judgments in fire insurance is inescapable. However, it is not necessary, nor is it a common custom, always to express credibility evaluations in mathematical language. In his daily work, the underwriter soon acquires the habit of accepting certain evidence as credible and dismissing others as untrustworthy. Now, these personal evaluations will vary not only from underwriter to underwriter; but even the same man may, at different times, employ different standards in similar situations because of purely subjective conditionings on each of the particular occasions. Probably no one will be amazed at this familiar observation, and few will find the underwriter's vacillations on credibility in any way reprehensible as long as his fund of common sense and knowledge of the business allows the company a profitable operation.