Stochastic models in health insurance.

Economic agents are risk averse; they are aware of risks with a huge economic impact and will look for ways to transfer these risks to other players on the market. The insurance business was born in light of this risk aversion. Actuaries are professional experts in the economic assessment of uncertain events, using analytical tools from economics, statistics and finance. Our research project will consider health related insurance products in the perspective of evolutions in society (such as an ageing population), changing supervisory guidelines in the insurance industry (such as Solvency II), an increasing interest in data collection and advanced techniques for data analysis. Within the sector of health insurance prominent evolutions are taking place in medical insurance, disability insurance and long-term care insurance. Knowledge has to be improved about trends in life expectancy, the quality of the extra years that we are living and the financial implications of these trends. The central question of the research project is: how can the analysis of data from rich sources (at population and market level, as well as insurance portfolio level), using appropriate stochastic models, lead to better risk management in health insurance?

Keywords:Long term care insurance., Health insurance, Disability insurance, Longevity, Actuarial science, Stochastic models, Risk management

Disciplines:Applied economics, Economic history, Macroeconomics and monetary economics, Microeconomics, Tourism