Blog posts

AI Chatbot for Actuarial Modelling

AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, are shaping the way we work. Personally, I find them useful, especially for refreshing my memory on programming syntax.

Given that cashflower is an open-source package with documentation available online, I decided to explore if an AI assistant can be used to help with actuarial modelling. In this post, I will share my findings.

Knowledge cut-off date

AI assistants have a knowledge cut-off date, meaning they are trained with information up to a specific point in time. The cashflower package is relatively new, so the AI assistant might not know about it. Sometimes, AI can …

Cashflower cheat sheet

Simplicity and efficiency are essential in actuarial cash flow modelling. That's why we're excited to introduce the cashflower cheat sheet — a one-page reference guide to all the crucial components.

You can download the cheat sheet (PDF) and keep it at your fingertips while using Cashflower.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out. Happy modelling!

Programming actuary

An actuary combines skills from 3 areas: mathematics, economics and IT. The focus of this post will be on the last area - IT. I will share my view of which computer skills are the most important for actuaries.

Diagram with actuarial skill set: mathematics, economics and information technology.

Actuarial skill set

Actuaries combine skills from 3 areas:

  • mathematics
  • economics
  • IT

Mathematics

Actuaries deal with numbers daily. A lot of actuaries have a mathematical background and generally enjoy maths. Also, statistics is very important for actuaries. The knowledge of this subject is necessary to build probability-based mathematical models.

Economics

The actuarial calculations are set within the financial world. Actuarial models …

Actuarial cash flow model overview

In this post, we will go over an overview of actuarial cash flow model. If you are interested in building models in Python, you can use the cashflower package.


List of content:

  1. Overview of actuarial cash flow model
  2. Modelling cash flows

Overview of actuarial cash flow model

Cash flow models consists of: a run plan, inputs (model points and assumptions), calculations and results

Run plan - run plan is a list of runs that we want to perform with the model. Actuaries need results for the model under various assumptions. For example, the first run has base assumptions, the second shocked mortality and the third shocked lapses. Each of these …

Shadow model in actuarial reporting

Do you work in an insurance company? You may come across the term shadow model in the context of actuarial reporting.

What's hidden in this mysterious term?

Actuarial cash flow models are usually complex. Actuaries develop them in commercial software or with programming languages.

It's not easy to review these models, especially for actuaries who are less technical. The validators also struggle to audit them due to their complexity.

That's why it's common to create a shadow cash flow model in an easier environment such as in a spreadsheet. The shadow model replicates the full model results. The shadow model …