During the past decade, supervised classification problems have been identified in several actuarial fields, such as risk management, projection modeling, fraud and anomaly detection, etc. In many of these problems, the respective classification task is subject to a highly imbalanced dataset, i.e., the number of instances of the relevant class is extremely small in comparison […]

These days, nobody disputes the profound impact and yet-untouched potential of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence anymore. Yet, in the actuarial sciences, these breakthrough possibilities are hampered by regulation, the need for numerical confidence and insight into model decision making, the latter being subsumed as a "black box problem". Thus, the quest for explainability is […]

The IASB issued 2017 the new comprehensive insurance accounting standard IFRS 17, with amendments issued in 2020. In addition to its general model, IFRS 17 introduces a modified approach, usually referred to as Variable Fee Approach (VFA), for a specific class of participating insurance contracts. Both the identification of such contracts and the application of […]

For an insurance company, ensuring the proper coordination between assets and liabilities in order to achieve targeted financial objectives is of paramount interest. A strategy used to reach such objectives is "asset and liability management" (ALM in short). ALM can therefore be viewed as any ongoing process that defines, implements, and monitors financial strategies to manage […]

For an insurance company, ensuring the proper coordination between assets and liabilities in order to achieve targeted financial objectives is of paramount interest. A strategy used to reach such objectives is "asset and liability management" (ALM in short). ALM can therefore be viewed as any ongoing process that defines, implements, and monitors financial strategies to […]

The debate on climate change has rapidly evolved in recent years. It is no longer on whether the evidence of human impact on climate change is real, but on whether key mitigating strategies being adopted are sufficient.   For insurance industry, climate change manifests itself through a variety of risks on the asset and liability […]

Up to 2022 additional financial reporting on sustainability has been done on a voluntary basis by insurance companies. The reporting companies, usually larger groups, regularly involve actuaries in the corresponding preparation of information. Early in 2022 relevant institutions have started to prepare concrete financial reporting requirements at European level, which will become mandatory for insurance […]

The IASB issued 2017 the new comprehensive insurance accounting standard IFRS 17, with amendments issued in 2020. In line with IFRS 9, IFRS 17 does not permit to present receipts and repayments of deposits, in IFRS 17 referred to as investment components, in P&L. In general, all payments which do not represent the provision of […]

The needed identification of cash flows not related to services introduces new considerations in the accounting process. Those will be discussed and approaches to achieve an adequate reflection in presentation. That does not only apply to contracts with savings elements, as in life insurance. As well non-life insurance contracts and reinsurance contracts often contain investment […]