Conference paper

The run-off patterns shown in the accompanying tables all relate to claim payments for direct insurance (and facultative reinsurance) business, before allowing for reinsurance recoveries and accounted for on a one year basis. Four sets of tables are shown for each type of business analysed; they differ only as a result of the methodology used in the analysis. The tables update those presented to the General Insurance Study Group (GISG) in October 1991, by including data from the 1990 returns in their calculation.

Recent years have seen the impact of a large number of catastrophes, not only on the London catastrophe market but on most general insurance offices. The paper starts off from the assertions that a) the development pattern of the loss advices of each catastrophe is unique to that catastrophe and can differ by source of advice, and that b) the development pattern of the net account is heavily by the outwards reinsurance pattern of protections, hence c) traditional methods of claim development estimates will not provide the correct answers in the reserving process.

This paper reports on the systems of claims equalisation, both statutory and voluntary in most of the European Community and Scandinavian countries. Case studies of the systems in Finland, Germany and Denmark are presented. The attitude of the industry bodies and the Inland Revenue in the UK are discussed. Appendices discuss technical formulae for determining transfers to or from equalisation reserves and the upper and lower limits for such reserves.

This paper describes the recent work of the Pecuniary Loss Working Party (PLWP). Section 2 provides the context for the recent work and describes the decision to concentrate on Mortgage Indemnity Guarantee (MIG). Section 3 contains descriptions of recent developments in the MIG marketplace, covering the UK housing market, reserving practice and product development. A particular methodology has been used to describe the complex relationships between factors affecting MIG. This methodology is described in general in Section 4.

The most recent paper on Extended Warranty Insurance was that presented by John Taylor to the then student's society in January 1985. This paper looks at the changes since then. As there has not been any significant changes in the product offered, we have not repeated the detail in the original paper except where it is necessary to understand the context of the current paper.

This paper is based primarily on a report on "Storm Severity over Britain" written for Commercial Union by Dr J.P. Palutikof and A.R. Skellern [11] of the Climatic Research Unit of the School of Environmental Sciences of the University of East Anglia. This report, which will be referred to as the "UEA" report from now on, examined the frequency and severity of wind storms from 1920 to 1990 in order to place the events of 1987 and 1990 in their long term context. The researchers identified 47 storms, classed as severe, during this period.

The general insurance actuary may be required to estimate the future liabilities for latent claims arising from the portfolio of an insurance or reinsurance company or a Lloyd's syndicate. This may be as part of a normal reserve valuation or as an exercise specifically dealing with latent claims. Papers have been presented to the 1990 and 1991 GISG conferences as an introduction to latent claims, but no specific advice has been given to actuaries as to the factors which should be taken into account and approaches to the problem which should be given attention.