mages' blog

The fifth R in Insurance conference took place at Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique, Paris on 8 June 2017.


This one-day conference focused once more on the wide range of applications of R in insurance, actuarial science and beyond. The conference programme covered topics including reserving, pricing, loss modelling, the use of R in a production environment and also new statistical methods such as big data analysis.


In the first plenary session, Julie Seguela (Covea) spoke about the textual analysis of expert reports to increase knowledge of technological risks. Text mining techniques and some helpful visualization packages were used on expert reports detailing circumstances, causes and consequences of these accidents.

The plenary talk was followed by two morning sessions. The first session focused on big data analytics, emphasizing new usage in the insurance industry. The second session consisted of a series of lightning talks about R packages or R modelling. The afternoon was split into general and life insurance, including talks on reserving or vine copulas.


In the closing plenary talk, Katrien Antonio (Professor of Actuarial Science at KU Leuven, Belgium) presented recent developments and challenges in non-life reserving. Her talk was illustrated on a large European dataset of liability claims (from private individuals) with monthly exposures using R.

All conference presentations are available on the conference website.

Finally, we are grateful to our sponsors RStudio, Verisk Insurance Solutions, Barnett Waddingham, Mirai Solutions, Milliman. This conference would not have been possible without their generous
support.

Next year we are back at Cass Business School London, 16 July 2018.

The programme for the 2017 R in Insurance conference in Paris has been published. Talks will discuss new ideas and research with the applications in life and general insurance, from network analysis, reserving, pricing to catastrophe modelling, followed by a conference dinner at the Musée d'Orsay. Registration is open until 22 May.

The fifth conference on R in Insurance will be held on 8 June 2017 at ENSAE. ENSAE is the Paris Graduate School for Economics, Statistics and Finance.

The intended audience of the conference includes both academics and practitioners who are active or interested in the applications of R in Insurance.

This one-day conference will focus again on applications in insurance and actuarial science that use R, the lingua franca for statistical computation. Topics covered are:

• the use of R in a production environment
• life insurance
• non-life insurance

All topics will be discussed within the context of using R as a primary tool for insurance risk management, analysis and modelling.

Programs of previous editions are available online: 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. To learn more about past events, please visit the associated web page.

Attendance of the whole conference is the equivalent of 6.5 hours of CPD for members of the UK Actuarial Profession

Registrations

Registrations on the conference website are opened and will be finalized in 2017 when participants will pay the registration fees. The registration's fee will be:

• Professional: 250 euros with the conference's dinner (150 euros without dinner)
• Academic: 100 euros with the conference's dinner (20 euros without dinner).

The gala dinner will take place in Musée d'Orsay.

Keynote speakers

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speakers are:

• Katrien Antonio, KU Leuven
• Julie Seguela, Covéa.

Venue

The conference will take place at ENSAE, 3 Avenue Pierre Larousse, 92240 Malakoff close to Paris.

Committees

Conference committee:

• Nicolas Baradel
• Christophe Dutang
• Caroline Hillairet

You can reach the conference committe via rininsurance17@sciencesconf.org.

The scientific committee consists of:

• Arthur Charpentier
• Christophe Dutang
• Markus Gesmann
• Giorgio Alfredo Spedicato
• Andreas Tsanakas

Sponsors

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the following sponsors

Institutional sponsors:

The 4th R in Insurance conference took place at Cass Business School London on 11 July 2016. This one-day conference focused once more on the wide range of applications of R in insurance, actuarial science and beyond. The conference programme covered topics including reserving, pricing, loss modelling, the use of R in a production environment and much more.

The audience of the conference included both practitioners (c.80%) and academics (c.20%) who are active or interested in the applications of R in Insurance. It was a truly international event with speakers and delegates from Europe, Asia and the Americas. The coffee breaks and conference dinner offered great networking opportunities.

Mario Wüthrich, ETH Zürich

In the first plenary session Mario Wüthrich (RiskLab ETH Zurich) spoke about the (new) challenges in actuarial science. While fundamentals of analysing data have not changed over the years, the data and technology available has, and with that new challenges emerged. Yet, as Mario pointed out, insurance is still often concerned with analysing 'little' data, as losses occur rarely. Furthermore, the bigger data sets, often generated by sensors, require careful calibration, monitoring and cleansing. Those new challenges provide opportunities for new research (if data is being made available) and the industry. The R community can provide links between the two. Mario would like to see more and better documentation of R packages, more insurance examples and better handling of big data.

Thereafter, the programme consisted of a combination of contributed presentations and lightning talks, as well as a panel discussion on how analytics is transforming the insurance business. Adrian Cuc (Verisk), Simon Brickman (Beazley), Roland Schmid (Mirai Solutions) and Markus Gesmann (Vario Partners) discussed the efforts made in bridging between data vendors, consultants and insurers, as well as the challenges of developing collaborative business models that respond to market needs.

Dan Murphy, Trinostics

In the closing plenary, Dan Murphy (Trinostics, San Francisco) gave an insight into his experience as an actuary on how to provide persuasive advice for senior management. He uses the three-C's: context, confidence and clarity. Context is about articulating the problem in a language senior management can understand it. Why does the management need to worry about the problem? If you have a solution, then you have to deliver it with conviction, because, most importantly is has to be actionable. Clarity, of your actionable insight, ensures that those actions can be delegated to the relevant team/employee by the management without you in the room.

The slides of the conference are available on request.

Scientific committee and sponsors

The members of the scientific committee were: Katrien Antonio (KU Leuven, UvA), Christophe Dutang (Université du Maine), Markus Gesmann (Vario Partners), Giorgio Spedicato (UnipolSai ) and Andreas Tsanakas (Cass Business School).

Finally, we are grateful to our sponsors Verisk, Mirai Solutions, Applied AI, RStudio, CYBAEA and Oasis, without whom the event wouldn't be possible.

R in Insurance 2017

We are delighted to announce next year’s event already. The conference will travel across the Channel to ENSAE, Paris, 8 June 2017. Further details will be published on www.rininsurance.com.

Hurry! The early bird registration offer for the 4th R in Insurance conference, 11 July 2016, at Cass Business School closes 30 May.

This one-day conference will focus once more on applications in insurance and actuarial science that use R, the lingua franca for statistical computation. Topics covered include reserving, pricing, loss modelling, the use of R in a production environment, and more.

We have a fantastic programme with international speakers and conference dinner at Ironmongers Hall. Keynotes will be given by Mario Wüthrich and Dan Murphy.

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of Verisk, Mirai Solutions, Applied AI, Studio, CYBAEA and Oasis, without whom the event wouldn't be possible.

We are delighted to announce that the programme for the 4th R in Insurance conference at Cass Business School in London, 11 July 2016, have been finalised.

Register by the end of May to get the early bird booking fee.

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of Verisk, Mirai Solutions, Applied AI, Studio, CYBAEA and Oasis, without whom the event wouldn't be possible.

Hurry! The abstract submission deadline for the 4th R in Insurance conference in London, 11 July 2016 is approaching soon.

You have until the 28th of March to submit a one-page abstract for consideration. Both academic and practitioner proposals related to R are encouraged. Please email your abstract of no more than 300 words (in text or pdf format) to rinsuranceconference@gmail.com.

Invited talks will be given by:

• Mario V. Wüthrich, RiskLab, Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich.
• Dan Murphy, President, Trinostics LLC.

Details about the registration and abstract submission are given on the dedicated R in Insurance page at Cass Business School, London.

Attendance of the whole conference is the equivalent of 6.5 hours of CPD for members of the Actuarial Profession.

For more information about the past events visit www.rininsurance.com.

Sponsors

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of Verisk/ISO, Mirai Solutions, RStudio, Applied AI, CYBAEA, and OASIS Loss Modelling Framework.

Gold Sponsors

Silver Sponsors

Following the successful 3rd R in Insurance conference in Amsterdam last year, we return to London this year.

The registration for the 4th conference on R in Insurance on Monday 11 July 2016 at Cass Business School has opened.

This one-day conference will focus again on applications in insurance and actuarial science that use R, the lingua franca for statistical computation.

The intended audience of the conference includes both academics and practitioners who are active or interested in the applications of R in insurance.

Invited talks will be given by:

• Mario V. Wüthrich, RiskLab, Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich.
• Dan Murphy, President, Trinostics LLC.

Details about the registration and abstract submission are given on the dedicated R in Insurance page at Cass Business School, London.

The submission deadline for abstracts is 28 March 2016. Please email your abstract of no more than 300 words to: rinsuranceconference@gmail.com.

Attendance of the whole conference is the equivalent of 6.5 hours of CPD for members of the Actuarial Profession.

For more information about the past events visit www.rininsurance.com.

Sponsors

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of Verisk/ISO, Mirai Solutions, RStudio, Applied AI, and CYBAEA.

Gold Sponsors

Silver Sponsors

I had the great pleasure time to attend the Warsaw R meetup last Thursday. The organisers Olga Mierzwa and Przemyslaw Biecek had put together an event with a focus on R in Insurance (btw, there is a conference with the same name), discussing examples of pricing and reserving in general and life insurance.

Experience vs. Data

I kicked off with some observations of the challenges in insurance pricing. Accidents are thankfully rare events, that's why we buy insurance. Hence, there is often not a lot of claims data available for pricing. Combining the information from historical data and experts with domain knowledge can provide a rich basis for the assessment of risk. I presented some examples using Bayesian analysis to understand the probability of an event occurring. Regular readers of my blog will recognise the examples from earlier posts. You find my slides on GitHub.

Download slides

Non-life insurance in R

Emilia Kalarus from Triple A shared some of her experience of using R in non-life insurance companies. She focused on the challenges in working across teams, with different systems, data sets and mentalities.

As an example, Emilia talked about the claims reserving process, which in her view should be embedded in the full life cycle of insurance, namely product development, claims, risk and performance management. Following this thought, she presented an idea for claims reserving that models the life of a claim from not incurred and not reported (NINR), to incurred but not reported (IBNR), reported but not settled (RBNS) and finally paid.

Stochastic mortality modelling

The final talk was given by Adam Wróbel from the life insurer Nationale Nederlanden, discussing stochastic mortality modelling. Adam's talk on analysing mortality made me realise that life and non-life insurance companies may be much closer to each other than I thought.

Although life and non-life companies are usually separated for regulatory reasons, they both share the fundamental challenge of predicting future cash flows. An example where the two industries meet is product liability.

Over the last century, technology has changed our environment fundamentally, more so than ever before. Yet, we still don't know which long-term impact some of the new technologies and products will have on our life expectancy. Some will prolong our lives, others may make us ill.

A classic example is asbestos, initial regarded as a miracle mineral, as it was impossible to set on fire, abundant, cheap to mine, and easy to manufacture. Not surprisingly it was widely used until it was linked to causing cancer. Over the last 35 years, the non-life insurance industry has paid well in excess of hundred billion dollars in compensations.

Slides and Code

The slides and R code of the presentations are hosted on the Warsaw R GitHub page.

Following the successful 3rd R in Insurance conference in Amsterdam this year, we will return to London next year. We will be back at Cass Business School, 11 July 2016.

The event will focus again on the use of R in insurance, bringing together experts from industry and academia with a diverse background of disciplines, such as actuarial science, catastrophe modelling, finance, statistics and computer science.

We are delighted to announce or keynote speakers already: Dan Murphy and Mario V. Wüthrich.

More details about the event will be published in due course here. For now, save the date in your diary.

PS: The picture above is a cluster analysis of the Lloyd's building in R.

Photo: Arthur Charpentier

The R in Insurance conference in Amsterdam was a sold out success! Congratulations to the organising committee at the University of Amsterdam, and many thanks to our sponsors:

Milliman, RStudio, CYBAEA, Deloitte, a.s.r., Triple A Risk Finance, AEGON, Delta Lloyd Amsterdam, QBE Re and APPLIED AI

This one-day conference focused once more on applications in insurance and actuarial science that use R. Topics covered included reserving, pricing, loss modelling, the use of R in a production environment and more.

Next summer we are back in London at Cass Business School.

The slides are now available from the links in the agenda below.

The programme for the 3rd R in Insurance conference is on-line. The event will take place on 29 June 2015 at the University of Amsterdam. Time to register now.


Special thanks to our sponsors, without whom the conference wouldn't be possible:
CYBAEA, RStudio, APPLIED AI, Milliman, QBE Re, AEGON, Delta Lloyd Amsterdam , Deloitte.

You find impressions from the previous events on www.rininsurance.com.

We hope to see you in Amsterdam!

Hurry! The abstract submission deadline for the 3rd R in Insurance conference in Amsterdam, 29 June 2015 is approaching soon.


You have until the 28th of March to submit a one-page abstract for consideration. Both academic and practitioner proposals related to R are encouraged. Please email your abstract of no more than 300 words (in text or pdf format) to r-in-insurance@uva.nl.

The intended audience of the conference includes both academics and practitioners who are active or interested in the applications of R in insurance.

Invited talks will be given by:

• Prof. Richard Gill, Leiden University
• Dr James Guszcza, FCAS, Chief Data Scientist, Deloitte - US

Details about the registration are given on the dedicated R in Insurance page at the University of Amsterdam.

Special thanks to our sponsors again: Rstudio, Cybea, Applied AI, Milliman, QBE, AEGON and Delta Lloyd Amsterdam.

Btw, notes from last year's conference were published in the R Journal.

The registration for the third conference on R in Insurance on Monday 29 June 2015 at the University of Amsterdam has opened.


This one-day conference will focus again on applications in insurance and actuarial science that use R, the lingua franca for statistical computation.

The intended audience of the conference includes both academics and practitioners who are active or interested in the applications of R in insurance.

Invited talks will be given by:

• Prof. Richard Gill, Leiden University
• Dr James Guszcza, FCAS, Chief Data Scientist, Deloitte - US

Perhaps you have seen Richard's TED talk on Statistical Errors in Court or Jim's talk on Predictive Modelling and Behaviour Insight or Actuarial Analytics in R. We are thrilled that they accepted our invitation.

We invite you to submit a one-page abstract for consideration. Both academic and practitioner proposals related to R are encouraged. The submission deadline for abstracts is 28 March 2015.
Please email your abstract of no more than 300 words (in text or pdf format) to r-in-insurance@uva.nl.

Details about the registration and abstract submission are given on the dedicated R in Insurance page at the University of Amsterdam.

For more information about the past events visit www.rininsurance.com.

The 2nd R in Insurance conference took place last Monday, 14 July, at Cass Business School London.

This one-day conference focused once more on applications in insurance and actuarial science that use R. Topics covered included reserving, pricing, loss modelling, the use of R in a production environment and more.

In the first plenary session, Montserrat Guillen (Riskcenter, University of Barcelona) and Leo Guelman (Royal Bank of Canada, RBC Insurance) spoke about the rise of uplift models. These predictive models are used for improved targeting of policyholders by marketing campaigns, through the use of experimental data. The presenters illustrated the use of their uplift package (available on CRAN), which they have developed for such applications.

The registration for the 2nd R in Insurance conference at Cass Business School London will close this Friday, 4 July.

The programme includes talks from international practitioners and leading academics, see below. For more details and registration visit: http://www.rininsurance.com.

The early bird registration offer for the 2nd R in Insurance conference, 14 July 2014, at Cass Business School closes tomorrow.


This one-day conference will focus once more on applications in insurance and actuarial science that use R, the lingua franca for statistical computation. Topics covered include reserving, pricing, loss modelling, the use of R in a production environment, and more. All topics are to be discussed within the context of using R as a primary tool for insurance risk management, analysis and modelling.

The conference programme consists of invited talks and contributed presentations discussing the wide range of fields in which R is used in insurance:


Attendance of the whole conference is the equivalent of 6.5 hours of CPD for members of the Actuarial Profession.

You can register directly on the conference web site www.rininsurance.com.

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of Mango Solutions, CYBAEA, RStudio and PwC without whom the event wouldn't be possible.

I am delighted to announce that the programme and abstracts for the second R in Insurance conference at Cass Business School in London, 14 July 2014, have been finalised.


Register by the end of May to get the early bird booking fee.

The organisers gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of Mango Solutions, CYBAEA, RStudio and PwC without whom the event wouldn't be possible.

Don't forget, this is the final week you can submit an abstract for the second R in Insurance conference.
For more details see http://www.rininsurance.com and perhaps for inspiration review last year's programme.

Here is the poster for the 2nd R in Insurance conference on Monday 14 July 2014 at Cass Business School in London:

R in Insurance 2014 conference poster. Download PDF version

Important dead lines to keep in mind:

• Abstract submissions: 28 March 2014
• Early bird booking: 30 May 2014
• R in Insurance Conference: 14 July 2014

For all further information see: www.rininsurance.com.

The programme and the presentation files of the first R in Insurance conference have been published on GitHub.