GAD's collaborations on show at GIRO

4 Sep 2023 02:23 PM

GAD experts will be at the 50th annual conference for general insurance actuaries. GIRO topics will include disaster risk finance, AI and trends in motor claims.

Experts from the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) are set to share their insights and expertise in collaboration with clients and actuarial peers at a major insurance sector event. Topics will range from cars to climate change.

The GIRO Conference 2023, to be held in Edinburgh in November, will be marking its 50th anniversary. It is the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ annual conference for general insurance actuaries.

Among the topics, attendees will have opportunities to hear from specialists in a variety of fields such as pricing, reserving, modelling, and regulatory updates. Other subjects will include:

• Geo-political risk
• Diversity, equity and inclusion
• AI technology and cyber risk
• Solvency ll … among others

Speakers from GAD

Actuaries from GAD will be speaking at workshops alongside our partners, illustrating the range of areas GAD staff are involved in.

Disaster risk financing: GAD actuary Andy Jinks and Start Network actuary Rachel Haldane will talk about Start Ready, a unique funding mechanism set up to help people recover from natural disasters. Andy will be speaking from his role on the governance committee and Rachel from supporting Start in procuring insurance. The Start Ready risk pool is in its second year and the governance committee has taken out reinsurance to make its funding pool go further.

Artificial intelligence: As a ‘hot topic’ GAD actuary Sam Davies will be presenting a workshop alongside Financial Reporting Council (FRC) actuary Matthew Myring-McCullagh on approaches to using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in actuarial work. The FRC commissioned GAD to research this area for them and this session will explore the findings on:

• areas of usage: where AI and ML are used and in which areas of the profession
• approach: what approaches are being used and how they are chosen
• governance: how the governance of AI and ML processes compares to more traditional techniques
• output: how AI and ML affect internal output for companies and how the use, approach and governance impact the uncertainty around actuarial modelling

Credit: Unsplash

Sam recently commented:

“At GAD we’ve been using some of these techniques in our actuarial work for a few years, and the research has highlighted that these techniques have become established practice for some actuaries, especially in areas such as general insurance pricing.”

Third party working party: The working party investigates trends in motor claims (injury and property damage). Working party co-chairs GAD actuary Jacqui Draper and WTW actuary Robert Treen will provide updates including trends in frequency and severity of claims for all claim types as seen across collated industry data. They will then put them into context of the wider market environment.