There is a growing interest in the use of the tail conditional expectation as a measure of risk. For an institution faced with a random loss, the tail conditional expectation represents the conditional average amount of loss that can be incurred in a fixed period, given that the loss exceeds a specified value. This value is typically based on the quantile of the loss distribution, the so-called value-at-risk. The tail conditional expectation can therefore provide a measure of the amount of capital needed due to exposure to loss. This paper examines this risk measure for “exponential dispersion models”, a wide and popular class of distributions to actuaries which, on one hand, generalizes the Normal and shares some of its many important properties, but on the other hand, contains many distributions of nonnegative random variables like the Gamma and the Inverse Gaussian.

The classical evaluation of pure premiums for excess of loss reinsurance with reinstatements requires the knowldege of the claim size distribution of the insurance risk. In the situation of incomplete information, where only a few characteristics of the aggregate claims to an excess of loss layer can be estimated, the method of stop-loss ordered bounds yields a simple analytical distribution-free approximation to pure premiums of excess of loss reinsurance with reinstatements. It is shown that the obtained approximation is enough accurate for practical purposes and improves the analytical approximations obtained using either a gamma, translated gamma, translated inverse Gaussian or a mixture of the last two distributions.

This paper extends the continuous credibility weighting introduced to hazard estimation in Hardy and Panjer (1998) and Nielsen and Sandqvist (2000) to the more general case, where the common basis is a proportional hazard model.

Bonus-malus systems typically lead to high maluses when claims at fault are reported. Such penalties are often difficult to implement in practice. It is shown in this paper that this drawback may be avoided by combining a posteriori premium corrections with a deductible varying according to the level occupied in the scale.

Fair valuation is becoming a major concern for actuaries, especially in the perspective of IAS norms. One of the key aspects in this context is the simultaneous analysis of assets and liabilities in any sound actuarial valuation. The aim of this paper is to illustrate these concepts, by comparing three common ways of giving bonus in life insurance with profit: reversionary, cash or terminal. For each participation scheme, we compute the fair value of the contract taking into account liability parameters (guaranteed interest rate and participation level) as well as asset parameters (market conditions and investment strategy). We find some equilibrium conditions between all those coefficients and compare, from an analytical and numerical point of view, the systems of bonus. Developments are made first in the classical binomial model and then extended in a Black and Scholes economy.

In a deregulated insurance market, insurance carriers have an incentive to be innovative in their pricing decisions by segmenting their portfolios and designing new bonus-malus systems (BMS). This paper examines the evolution of market shares and claim frequencies in a two-company market, when one insurer breaks off the existing stability by introducing a super-discount class in its BMS. Several assumptions concerning policyholders and insurers behavior are tested. Diffusion theory is used to model the spread of the information concerning the new BMS among prospective customers. A wide variety of market outcomes results: one company may take over the market or the two may survive with equal or unequal market shares, each specializing in a specific niche of the market. Before engaging in an aggressive competitive behavior, insurers should consequently be reasonably confident in their assumptions concerning the reactions of their policyholders to the new BMS.