General Insurance Convention 1988
Harrogate, 1988
Corporate planning in general insurance. - Akhurst, Ron B. 36 pages.
This working party paper is therefore intended to provide a general introduction to the subject, which is largely missing from actuarial literature: to cover basic planning elements common to all businesses; to highlight certain features specifically relating to general insurance; to discuss aspects of actuarial involvement in planning; to give suggestions for further reading. While much of the approach to strategic planning as described in this paper is (or should be) straightforward commonsense, the formulation of a strategic plan can prove a major challenge in practice. For students, it may also be helpful to have a case study available and it is intended to review one possible (hypothetical) outline example at the GISG Convention, with a view to determining whether further development of such a study is felt useful.
Expenses Working Party. - Malde, Shailesh A. 47 pages.
The purpose of this report is to give a resume of this subject in an easily readable form. It also gives some details about what companies currently do in this area. It is hoped that the report will provide a better understanding of the subject and will provoke companies to give more attention to the analysis and allocation of expenses; also that the problems highlighted in the report will lead to a discussion of possible solutions. The report should also be of interest to the student of the General Insurance examination of the Institute.
Interim report. - Working Party on Claims Runoff Patterns. 56 pages.
The most comprehensive set of claims run-off data available in the UK is the data in Forms 33 (Forms 35 for 3 year business) of the returns which have to be made to the DTI by companies authorised to write business in the UK. We restricted our investigations to UK risk groups because it was thought that it would unduly complicate our study to include business from other countries.
LMX. Excess of loss reinsurance of Lloyd's syndicates and London Market companies. - Lyons, Graham E. 70 pages.
The London Market comprises Lloyd's Syndicates and London Market Companies (companies in London or London operations of large composites writing Lloyd's type business). These entities write a wide variety of business, both insurance and reinsurance, and cover all classes of business including such exotic business as professional indemnity and aggregate products liability. Because of the nature of the business it is a necessity to obtain protection covering single risk accumulations and pure catastrophe exposure by way of excess of loss reinsurance. Much of this excess of loss reinsurance is written by other Lloyd's Syndicates and London Market Companies. This effectively means that the reinsurance comes back into the London Market, and that reinsurance protection is required for this further tranche of business which again largely comes back into the London Market. This is what is known as the incestuous nature of the London Market and why it has its own peculiarities and why it therefore needs special consideration.
The aim of the LMX Working Party was to set down the nature of the London Market and the special considerations which apply to LMX business.
The management of uncertainty in a general insurance company Working Party on Solvency . - Daykin, Chris D; Hey, G Brian. 40 pages.
Although a 1987 Institute paper by this Working Party certainly did not say all that could be said on the subject of solvency, from a statutory or supervisory perspective, the Working Party felt that the focus of attention should move to the broader issue of financial strength, the long term financial well-being of an insurance company. Statutory solvency and Companies Act solvency can be regarded as subsets of this broader concept. For statutory solvency considerations, new business may be assumed to cease, either immediately, or after a short period of continued business. The central concern is with the adequacy of the assets to meet the liabilities in this context. Although we allowed in our 1987 paper for the possibility of two years' new business, little attention was paid to the underlying rationale for the assumption made about the claim ratios achieved on this business, whether the business could be written on such a basis and whether it was consistent with the assumed rate of growth. Business was assumed to cease after two years and then run off; no attempt was made to look at the financial results that would be implied for such a company or what would happen if it were allowed to write business on a continuing basis.
These are some of the questions to which the Solvency Working Party has turned in the third phase of its work, since 1987.
Marine insurance and reinsurance. - Czapiewski, Colin J W. 39 pages.
The only major area of insurance in the UK without substantial actuarial involvement is that referred to as MAT: Marine, Aviation and Transport. Incidentally this state of affairs seems to apply to most overseas countries also. The Institute library is practically devoid of literature on the subject although the Chartered Institute of Insurance does have a fair amount of related information.
This paper provides a basic introduction to Marine Insurance and Reinsurance, emphasising aspects of particular interest to Actuaries. Although Marine insurance is international, the paper concentrates upon business written in the UK and so many similarities exist with London Market Non-Marine. Much detail that is common to both has therefore been left out entirely or dealt with briefly. Aviation has been omitted to preserve some brevity. The paper does not describe all the business written by Marine underwriters as this includes Incidental Non- Marine.
Overseas developments. - Tutt, Leslie W G; Kennedy, Samuel P L. 10 pages.
The Centre for Insurance and Investment Studies at the City university Business School continues to develop its monitoring of publications related to insurance. Abstracts of appropriate publications are compiled and placed on the Register of Insurance Research (a computer based enquiry system run by the Centre). Over the two years 1987 and 1988 approximately one hundred abstracts of publications related to overseas developments in General Insurance have been put on the Register. These cover a wide range of topics which is reviewed in this paper.
Reinsurance and retentions. - Guaschi, Frank E. 23 pages.
It is as well to admit at the start that Reinsurance is such a vast subject that in the time available the working Party could barely scratch the surface. We deliberately set out to avoid constructing elaborate theories since these rarely have any practical applications. In particular the much-neglected field of Retentions can only be approached empirically in practice.