Nonlife Loss Reserving

Abstract

Abstract This article presents a brief description of nonlife claims reserving methods. Nonlife claims reserves are financial resources, set aside from all other insurance operations, as a provision for claims not completely settled at a specific time. Since these provisions constitute the largest liabilities carried by nonlife insurers, their determination affects many aspects of the business, such as ratemaking and the assessment of the insurer's net worth. From the actuarial point of view, reserving is a problem of estimation, or more precisely, forecasting. As a consequence, reserving methods range from very simple deterministic techniques to some very sophisticated ones, based on stochastic models for claim settlement. We present, in a structured way, the main approaches in the field, and provide the interested reader with references for further study.