I am an actuary, not an economist, although I hold economics in high regard as a field. It tackles questions that are fascinating, ambitious, and sometimes messy in ways that make me slightly jealous. Still, I remain an actuary, and perhaps that makes me a little more sceptical of certain techniques. Maybe it is because…
About a decade ago, a compelling idea percolated up through academia and into industry – including the insurance industry: Signing forms at the top, rather than the bottom, could boost honesty. Researchers Francesco Gino and Dan Ariely championed this concept, which quickly gained traction. The logic seemed sound – remind people to be truthful before…
Navigating Complexity in Queue Management: Slightly serious insights from the Motor Vehicle Licence Renewal Office Queue management at the motor vehicle licence renewal office offers a window into a realm of complexity that extends far beyond the waiting room. Exploring priority queuing and weighted fair queuing (WFQ), we uncover a world of probabilistic models, dynamic…
Is this blog dead? No, but you could be forgiven for thinking so. I will be posting a little more frequently than over the last year. That isn’t a high bar. Given the long silence, there are quite a few topics I’ve been thinking about and discussing with friends and colleagues. You’ll have to check…
I had a discussion with a client recently about the virtues of ensuring data written into a data warehouse is rock solid and understood and well defined. My training and experience has given me high confidence that this is the right way forward for typical actuarial data. Here I’m talking in force policy data files,…
ENID is a term widely used, just generally not in South Africa. For some reason we didn’t import the term along with most of Solvency II. This has nothing to do with the Famous Five. While it is most common in the general insurance space, it is relevant across the spectrum of risk management and…
I’ve had the privilege to straddle life insurance and non-life insurance (P&C, general, short term insurance, take your pick of terms) in my career. On balance, I think having significant exposure to both has increased my knowledge in each rather than lessened the depth of my knowledge in either. I’ve been able to transport concepts…
I’m as excited as the next guy about the possibilities of “Big Data!” but possibly more excited about the opportunities presented by plain old “Modest Data”. I believe there is plenty of scope for useful analysis on fairly moderate data sets with the right approach and tools. I’d go as far as to say that…
