Underwriting & Pricing
Drone Makers Shift to Commercial Uses as Consumer Market Crashes
The fledgling drone industry is in the throes of change as weak consumer demand and falling prices drive startups to shift their focus to specialized business applications. 3D Robotics, an early ...
Reporter’s Notebook: 10 Takeaways From InsureTechConnect
You've probably heard there is tremendous investor interest right now in technology-first insurance startups, or InsurTech firms. The first InsureTech Connect Conference in Las Vegas in early October ...
Does Analytics Mark the End of Underwriter Influence?
Underwriting is the secret sauce of the insurance industry. The process of selecting and pricing risk is essential to the profitability of a carrier, and the deep expertise necessary for this skill ...
Drowsiness a Problem for Teen Drivers: Liberty Mutual
More than half (56 percent) of licensed teens admit to having driven when they felt too tired to drive their best, and almost a third (32 percent) are driving drowsy at least sometimes, according to ...
Not All ‘Optimization’ Is Price Optimization; Allstate’s CGR Proves It
"The purpose of price optimization is to extract as much profit as possible from policyholders, who are often required to purchase insurance policies," according to a February 2015 press release from ...
An Accident of the Rating Process: Allstate’s Cure Explained
In Part 1 of this article series, I described cost-based pricing used by actuaries, which includes business judgment—introducing differences between the technical price indication for a book of ...
About Those Rates: Why Allstate’s Rating Program May Not Be What It Seems
Actuaries occupy a quiet, arcane world, their debates obscure: Loss development factors: weighted vs. straight? Premium impact: parallelogram vs. extension of exposures? Reserve methods: chain ladder ...
Cyber Risk and the Threat of the Unknown
As new technology is developed and digital applications are rapidly becoming more prevalent, cybersecurity continues to be an evolving risk and a potential loss area for insurance companies. The ...