The insurance underwriting cycle is important from a financial stability perspective, as insurers are more prone to face underwriting losses during a soft market. Therefore, forecasting the underwriting cycle could potentially help insurers improve profit. However, there are some pertinent questions that need to be addressed:

• Are the underwriting cycles real and explainable?
• Even if they exist, can they at all be objectified through a forecasting model?
• Can an auto-regression time series model be appropriate to explain the documented cyclicality?
• Are there any models, other than auto-regressive models, which capture the cycle more appropriately?
• Which variable(s) should be used to quantify this insurance phenomenon?

In this interactive live presentation, an attempt will be made to address the above questions.

Some documented techniques to forecast the underwriting cycle will be discussed. The impact of unusual (catastrophic) events will also be assessed. All in all, a comparative assessment will be made to see if it is worth trying to forecast the underwriting cycle.

How we navigate the challenges and successfully forecast the cycle, will help the insurers take proactive actions to deal with the underwriting cycle.

This will be a high-level session with a touch of technical application. It should be of interest to actuaries at all levels with an interest in general insurance market dynamics and a knack for statistical modelling.

Speakers: Dhrubo Banerjee, Swiss Re