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Sessional meetings: papers and abstracts of discussions
The Chairman (Mr J. B. Orr, F.F.A.): I am the chief actuary for general insurance (GI) at the Prudential Regulation Authority, which is a subsidiary of the Bank of England. We are very much focussed on the discipline around reserving adequacy. The robustness of reserves is absolutely critical to the general insurance business model and in many ways from a regulatory issues perspective it is a gift that keeps giving. Issues still arise in the reserving space and it is one that we are "constantly anxious about"; it is one that we do expect to have the odd nasty surprise, and even in the last few years we have seen the examples of Equity Red Star and in the Irish operations of Royal and Sun Alliance. If we go back a little bit further, we have the example of Independent Insurance. I believe there was also an example called Vehicle and General in the 1970s where a reserving issue came through.
So, reserving is absolutely critical in GI. As well as that, what we would observe is that the demands on reserving are increasing. The frequency of reserving exercises is increasing and the range of reporting requirements, whether those are internal or external, is proliferating.
Therefore the work that Dr Bruce and his colleagues are doing in the Towards Optimal Reserving Process (TORP) working party is absolutely critical, in terms of investing in more efficient and effective processes. I am very keen to see this work shared.
Moving onto the speakers' biographies. Mr Taylor has worked as an actuary in the UK GI market since 1983, having spent his career prior to that in life and pensions roles. He qualified in 1990 and held GI reserving roles at General Accident, Co-op, Direct Line, before joining Axa Insurance in 2014. At Axa Insurance, Mr Taylor is a senior manager with responsibility for delivering reserving aspects of Solvency II. He has been a member of the TORP working party since its inception in 2012.
Dr Bruce has been an actuary in the general insurance market since 1997. He qualified in 2001 while at PwC and has held senior roles in two managing agents...