12 strategies to uncover any wrongs inside

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Look for nonlinearities

Not all 10% increases are created equal. And by that we mean, assumption effects are often more impactful in one direction than in the other. Especially when it comes to truncation models or those which use a CTE measure (conditional tail expectation).

Principles-based reserves, for example, use a CTE70 measure. [Take the average of the (100% – 70% = 30%) of the scenarios.] If your model increases expense 3% across the board, sure, on average, your asset funding need might increase by exactly that amount. However, because your final measurement isn’t the average across all the scenarios, but only the worst ones, it’s likely that your reserve amounts are going to increase by significantly more than the average. You might need to run a few different tests, at various magnitudes of change, to determine how your various outputs change as a function of the volatility of your inputs.

Publication Date: 14 July 2021

Publication Site: SLOPE – Actuarial Modeling Software