This blog reflects on the journey behind one of the two papers highly commended for the 2024 Brian Hey Prize. Co-author Cian Creedon shares how the idea was sparked, the collaborative effort that brought it to life, and how support from the IFoA helped turn research into recognition. A motivating read for anyone thinking of submitting in 2025.
It was an enormous and surprising honour for me and the rest of the general insurance Claims Inflation Working Party to have been highly commended for our paper ‘Claims inflation estimation: A practical guide for historical data’. This is the first paper produced by the working party, though we plan for others to follow.
In the late spring of 2022, I met with my old friend Richard Stock in the Cock and Woolpack pub for a Guinness. Richard inquired what was keeping me busy at work. I replied that incorporating recent supernormal inflation trends in my role as a reinsurance pricing actuary was quite challenging. Richard felt in a similar boat. The conversation was the genesis of a London Market Actuaries Group (a fantastic organisation and ongoing bargain at £65 per annum) talk and ultimately the founding* of the working party. This serves to highlight the risks inherent in a congenial pint.
We founded the working party the following year. Its aim was to comprehensively explore and produce practical guidance on how to deal with periods of inflation volatility in all aspects of general insurance actuarial work. We recognise this is perhaps a tad ambitious, but ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ as they say! Ironically the first step towards this goal was to establish and evaluate methods to assess historical inflation level in claims’ cohorts. And therefore, how they might be changing in relation to external factors (for example supernormal economic inflation).
Accordingly, this problem formed the key area of research for the working party in 2023. I am an enormous believer in the adage ‘if it was not written down, it may as well never have happened’. My key priority was to ensure the fantastic work of my colleagues was collated into a research paper, which could be used as a basis for presentations and disseminated among the actuarial community.
Throughout the process, the IFoA has been remarkably helpful. It really is fantastically encouraging to see just how important it is to the profession to continue to promote collegiate research. As many can attest, for instance, academic textbooks don’t come cheap. I am embarrassed to say I was actually unaware of the IFoA’s library service until a colleague pointed it out to me. This has been enormously useful for easily getting hold of useful texts with minimal effort. Many thanks to the library team for guiding me through this.
Ultimately we did lose out to my old desk mate from a decade back (reinforcing how small our community is), Neil and colleagues (well-deserved on their part, I hasten to add). But being highly commended for the Brian Hey Prize has been an enormous endorsement for the working party and we hope to submit again this year!
*Re-founding is a more accurate term as there was a previous incarnation of a general insurance Claims Inflation Working Party some decades ago.
