One of the most fundamental tasks in non-life insurance, done on regular basis, is risk reserving assessment analysis, which amounts to predict stochastically the overall loss reserves to cover possible claims. The most common reserving methods are based on different parametric approaches using aggregated data structured in the run-off triangles. We propose a rather non-parametric approach, which handles the underlying loss development triangles as functional profiles and predicts the claim reserve distribution through permutation bootstrap. Three competitive functional-based reserving techniques, each with slightly different scope, are presented; their theoretical and practical advantages – in particular, effortless implementation, robustness against outliers, and wide-range applicability – are discussed. An evaluation of the empirical performance of the designed methods and a full-scale comparison with standard (parametric) reserving techniques are carried on several hundreds of real run-off triangles against the known real loss outcomes. An important objective of the talk is also to promote the idea of natural usefulness of the functional reserving methods among the reserving practitioners.

Supplement:

R package: ProfileLadder: Functional-Based Chain Ladder for Claims Reserving

Functional claims reserving methods based on aggregated chain-ladder data, also known as a run-off triangle, implemented in three nonparametric algorithms (PARALLAX, REACT, and MACRAME) proposed in Maciak, Mizera, and Pešta (2022) <doi:10.1017/asb.2022.4>. Additional methods including permutation bootstrap for completed run-off triangles are also provided.