Claims Reserving with a Stochastic Vector Projection

Abstract

In the last three decades, a variety of stochastic reserving models has been proposed in the general insurance literature mainly using (or reproducing) the eminent Chain-Ladder claims reserving estimates. In practice, when the data doesn’t satisfy the Chain-Ladder assumptions, high prediction errors might occur. Thus, in this paper, a combined methodology is proposed which is based on the stochastic vector projection method and uses the regression through the origin approach of Murphy (1994), but with heteroscedastic errors instead, and different to those that used by Mack (1993, 1994). Furthermore, the Mack (1993) distribution-free model appears to have higher prediction errors when it is compared with the pro-posed one, particularly, for data sets with increasing (regular) trends. Finally, three empirical examples with irregular and regular data sets illustrate the theoretical findings, and the concepts of best estimate and risk margin are reported.