CAS Bias and Insurance Research Author Receives American Academy of Actuaries Research Award

The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) congratulates Olivier Côté, ACAS, on receiving the 2026 American Academy of Actuaries Award for Research. Côté received the honor for his contributions as co-author of "A Scalable Toolbox for Exposing Indirect Discrimination in Insurance Rates," published in the CAS Research Paper Series on Bias and Insurance. Presented at the 2026 Actuarial Research Conference, the award recognizes outstanding work by an early-career scholar that advances actuarial perspectives on public policy issues.

The Academy recognized Côté's work for its novel approach to adapting lessons from machine learning into a scalable framework for assessing fairness in insurance. Co-authored by Côté, Marie-Pier Côté, and Arthur Charpentier, the paper provides actuaries with a practical, scalable toolbox to detect, quantify, and diagnose potential indirect discrimination in insurance pricing. Rather than relying on a single fairness measure, the paper introduces a structured framework of complementary tools that helps actuaries better understand where, how, and why potential disparities may arise.

The CAS Research Paper Series on Bias and Insurance explores emerging issues related to bias and fairness in insurance. The series aims to equip actuaries with practical tools and foundational knowledge to help examine potential bias across insurance pricing and other insurance operations while supporting informed discussions among insurers, regulators, researchers, and other stakeholders. Learn more about CAS research at casact.org/research.