Ratemaking Working Group Announces Winners of 2023 Call Paper Program
The Ratemaking Research Working Group has announced two winners of their 2023 Call Paper Program:
- “Nonlife Insurance Risk Classification Using Categorical Embedding” by Peng Shi and Kun Shi.
- “An Analysis of the Current Saudi Arabian No-Claim Discount System and Its Adaptability For Novice Women Drivers” by Jorge Yslas Altamirano,Asrar Alyafie, and Corina Constantinescu.
Both papers will be available in the Spring 2023 volume of the E-Forum, along with four other papers submitted for the call paper program. The $10,000 cash prize available for the call will be split equally between the two papers.
“Peng and Kun’s paper addresses a data analysis problem that is particularly acute in actuarial applications: categorical data with many different categories,” said Brian Fannin, ACAS, CSPA, CAS research actuary. “These are things like rating territory, or class codes. They’re vital to insurance companies, but they don’t play well with many modeling techniques which expect data to exist on a continuum. This paper illustrates a technique to use categorical data in a novel way to support risk classification and input to deep learning models.”
The paper by Altamirano, Alyafie and Constantinescu is a critical examination of the regulatory response to the sudden appearance of a large, new class of drivers, the authors consider rating schemes in other countries. “The result is a fantastic primer of some of the possible options to gauge the success of mandatory auto tariffs,” Fannin said. “This is foundational material for actuaries working in those markets, but also for policymakers who want more context to evaluate their decisions.”
Research Call Paper Programs are routinely announced by the Ratemaking, Reinsurance, Risk, and Reserving research working groups. Each group typically operates a call paper program once every two years, though additional calls are sometimes conducted in off years. For each call paper program, authors are invited to submit short research proposals which are vetted by the sponsoring working group. If accepted, authors are paired with reviewers who will comment on preliminary and final drafts. A cash prize is available to recognize particularly exemplary work. All papers which are cleared by reviewers will appear in the E-Forum.
