Pricing in General Insurance

xxv

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife, Francesca, for her support and the many

creative ways she devised for shielding me from familial invexendo, simply making this

endeavour possible; and my children, Lisa, David, Nathan and Sara, for those times they

managed to breach that shield. Thanks also to the rest of my family for helping in different

ways, with special gratitude to my aunt for the crucial time she let me spend in her country

house in Trisobbio in the summer of 2013, retir’d from any mortal sight – except of course for

the compulsory Moon Pub evening expeditions with my friends.

I am grateful to the staff and the students at Cass Business School for providing me with

the motivation for starting this textbook and for the feedback on the lecture notes that

became the foundation for this pursuit.

Many thanks to Phillip Ellis, Eamonn McMurrough and all the colleagues at the Willis

Global Solution Consulting Group, both in London and Mumbai, for providing so many

opportunities of tackling new technical and commercial problems, experimenting with a

large variety of different techniques and engaging in critical discussion. I also thank them

for their encouragement while writing this book.

My deep gratitude to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries for its invaluable support in

this endeavour. Special thanks to Trevor Watkins for encouraging me and overseeing the

process, and to Neil Hilary, who reviewed the material, guided me through the process

of ensuring that this book be as relevant as possible to the profession and the students of

the General Insurance practice area and encouraged me and advised me in countless other

ways.

I would like to thank Jane Weiss and Douglas Wright for their initial review of the mate-

rial and their encouragement. Special thanks to Julian Lowe for his guidance and for sev-

eral important structural suggestions on the rst draft.

Many people have subsequently helped me with their feedback on various versions

of the manuscript. I am especially grateful to Julian Leigh and Sophia Mealy for pains-

takingly reading the whole manuscript and for their insightful comments on both con-

tent and style. I am also thankful to the following people for precious suggestions on

specic topics of the book: Paolo Albini (frequency analysis), Cahal Doris (catastrophe

modelling), Tomasz Dudek (all the introductory chapters), Junsang Choi (catastrophe

modelling), Phil Ellis, LCP (various presentational suggestions), Michael Fackler (all the

reinsurance content and frequency/severity modelling), Raheal Gabrasadig (introduc-

tory chapters), Chris Gingell (energy products), Torolf Hamm (catastrophe modelling),

Anish Jadav (introductory example, products), Joseph Lees (burning cost), Marc Lehmann

(catastrophe modelling), Joseph Lo (from costing to pricing, plus all the introductory

chapters),EamonnMcMurrough (pricing control cycle), David Menezes (aggregate loss

modelling, dependency modelling), Cristina Parodi (claims management), David Stebbing

(aviation), Andreas Troxler (dependency modelling) and Claire Wilkinson (weather

derivatives).

Section I

Introductory Concepts