EMB Experts to Speak at Casualty Actuarial Society's Ratemaking Seminar

Business Wire, March 13, 2008

Senior Consultant Serhat Guven and Partner Duncan Anderson participate in Predictive Modeling Panel Discussions, March 17-18

SAN DIEGO & BOSTON -- EMB, one of the leading global property and casualty (P&C) actuarial consulting firms, today announced that Serhat Guven, senior consultant, and Duncan Anderson, partner, will deliver presentations on predictive modeling at the Casualty Actuarial Society's (CAS) Ratemaking Seminar on March 17-18 in Boston, Massachusetts.

In light of the recent global economic downturn and continuing soft insurance market, these presentations are increasingly relevant to local, national, and global insurance executives. Economic factors have created an environment where insurance companies must be more focused on price optimization for competitive differentiation and to increase profitability. While these methods have proven effective in many European markets, they are becoming more common in the U.S. as early adopters begin to see their pricing optimization strategies pay off for both insurers and consumers.

At the CAS Ratemaking Seminar, Serhat Guven will lead a discussion on "Predictive Modeling: What is Out There?" in which he and the panel will explain the different methods of predictive modeling. This session will focus on tree-based modeling, as exemplified by the "Classification And Regression Tree" (CART) algorithm, with brief overviews of related topics such as Generalized Additive Models (GAMs), Neural Networks, and Multiple Additive Regression Splines (MARS). Finally, Guven will detail the advantages and disadvantages of various techniques for regression and Generalized Linear Models (GLM).

Duncan Anderson will contribute to the panel, "Sophisticated Price Optimization Methods," which will detail how the latest price optimization methods can be used to determine rates that best match an insurer's strategic profit and growth objectives. As recent years have seen an increase in the sophistication of predictive modeling of claims and, more recently, policyholder retention and conversion rates, this knowledge is important to leverage the full potential of underlying analyses. This session will describe technical approaches to price optimization, outline potential pitfalls to avoid, and discuss real examples of how such methods can improve performance in practice.

As part of CAS' Ratemaking Seminar, these sessions contribute to CAS' ongoing mission to advance the body of knowledge of actuarial science applied to property, casualty and similar risk exposure. The seminar will take place at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Boston. For more information about this event, please visit the following Website: http://www.casact.org/ratemaking/index.cfm?fa=consess#pm

About EMB America

EMB America has three offices in the US and is part of the worldwide EMB Group. EMB is the world's leading actuarial and business consultancy firm specializing in non-life insurance. We provide award-winning and innovative software and consultancy services to assist clients improve business performance, providing sustainable improvement through knowledge transfer. We advise both large and small insurers and reinsurers including 28 of the world's top 30 non-life companies. With offices across the across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific we can support firms both locally and globally.