All property and casualty insurers are required to carry out loss
reserving as a statutory accounting function. Thus, loss reserving is an
essential sphere of activity, and one with its own specialized body of
knowledge. While few books have been devoted to the topic, the amount of
published research literature on loss reserving has almost doubled in
size during the last fifteen years.
Greg Taylor's book aims to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art
treatment of loss reserving that reflects contemporary research advances
to date. Divided into two parts, the book covers both the conventional
techniques widely used in practice, and more specialized loss reserving
techniques employing stochastic models. Part I, Deterministic Models,
covers very practical issues through the abundant use of numerical
examples that fully develop the techniques under consideration. Part II,
Stochastic Models, begins with a chapter that sets up the additional
theoretical material needed to illustrate stochastic modeling. The
remaining chapters in Part II are self-contained, and thus can be
approached independently of each other. A special feature of the book is
the use throughout of a single real life data set to illustrate the
numerical examples and new techniques presented. The data set
illustrates most of the difficult situations presented in actuarial
practice. This book will meet the needs for a reference work as well as
for a textbook on loss reserving.