Actuaries and Non-Life Insurance
The profession of actuary has its roots in personal lines insurance, in life insurance to be more precise. Only after the mathematical foundations for scientific consideration of non-life insurance were laid down at the beginning of the last century did questions pertaining to non-life or property/casualty insurance begin to receive attention from the actuarial profession. Nowadays "claims actuaries" have become an integral part of liability, property/casualty, personal injury and motor insurance and it is hard to imagine these lines of business without them.
Tasks
Modern product development demands mathe¬matical and economic thinking as well as intuition. Using market analyses of the needs of insurance customers, actuaries gain insights into the necessity to adjust existing tariffs and to introduce new ones. Using these insights they then work on the calculation of the premiums and the technical actuarial reserves as well as technical specifications for the tariff in question. In so doing, they use appropriate actuarial assumptions. Of course, the insurance contract has to cover the costs it causes. One important instrument to monitor these conditions is so-called contribution margin calculation. Thus, mere product development has expanded these days into a more comprehensive task of product controlling performed by actuaries.
In non-life insurance the claims reserves are particularly important for the insurance company. Actuaries can examine and determine whether these reserves are high enough using theoretical risk models and methods. In lines of business with so called long tails – such as liability insurance – the findings about claims settlement are crucial for risk-adjusted pricing and tariff-setting.
Non-life actuaries are also closely involved in producing the company's annual accounts. They calculate balance sheet values, make cash flow forecasts and prepare data for internal accounts. They are also required to perform re-calculation when dealing with personal injury insurance that includes premium rebate.
Responsible Actuaries in Liability, Personal Injury and Motor Insurance
The amendments to the Insurance Supervision Law in 1994 saw the introduction of the position of Responsible Actuary to the non-life insurance lines of liability, personal injury and motor insurance. He or she has responsibility for personal injury insurance with guaranteed premium rebate as well as for pension reserves in general liability insurance, motor liability , motor personal injury and general personal injury insurance.
DAV's Non-Life Insurance Committee
The DAV's Non-Life Insurance Committee is a standing committee that looks at specialist issues relating to property/casualty insurance and promotes the professional interests of actuaries working in this field in Germany.
The committee is mainly concerned with the topics and questions with which Responsible Actuaries working for non-life insurers are confronted, and regularly provides specialist help and guidance for the practical day-to-day work of these actuaries.
Publications
Professional Standards of Practice
The following list provides an overview over the professional standards published by DAV's/IVS's Non-Life Insurance Committee. For every professional standard there is an abstract in English and the full version in German available.