Accounting for severity of risk when pricing insurance products

Abstract

We design a system for improving the calculation of the price to be charged for an insurance product. Standard pricing techniques generally take into account the expected severity of potential losses. However, the severity of a loss can be extremely high and the risk of a severe loss is not homogeneous for all policy holders. We argue that risk loadings should be based on risk evaluations that avoid too many model assumptions. We apply a nonparametric method and illustrate our contribution with a real problem in the area of motor insurance.