Non-parametric and parametric bootstrap techniques for age-to-age development factor methods in stochastic claims reserving

In the literature, one of the the main objects of stochastic claims reserving is to find models underlying the chain-ladder method in order to analyze the variability of the outstanding claims, either analytically or by bootstrapping. In bootstrapping these models are used to find a full predictive distribution of the claims reserve, even though there is a long tradition of actuaries calculating the reserve estimate according to more complex algorithms than the chain-ladder, without explicit reference to an underlying model. In this paper we investigate existing bootstrap techniques and suggest two alternative bootstrap procedures, one non-parametric and one parametric, by which the predictive distribution of the claims reserve can be found for any age-to-age development factor method, using some rather mild model assumptions. For illustration, the procedures are applied to four different development triangles.