Using Machine Learning to Model Claims Experience and Reporting Delays for Pricing and Reserving

In this paper we review existing modelling approaches for analysing claims experience in the presence of reporting delays, reviewing the formulation of mortality incidence models such as GLMs. We then show how these approaches have traditionally been adjusted for late reporting of claims using either the IBNR approach or the more recent EBNER approach. We then go on to introduce a new model formulation that combines a model for late reported claims with a model for mortality incidence into a single model formulation. We then illustrate the use and performance of the traditional and the combined model formulations on data from a multinational reinsurer. We show how GLMs, lasso regression, gradient boosted trees and deep learning can be applied to the new formulation to produce results of superior accuracy compared to the traditional approaches.