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CAS Research Council Issues Request for Proposals: Cyber Insurance Issues

The CAS Research Council is issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) to assess how cyber insurers should price the prospective coverage given the limited history and recent trend of increasing loss costs.

Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS)

The CAS was organized in 1914 as a professional society for the promotion of actuarial and statistical science as applied to insurance other than life insurance, such as automobile, liability other than automobile, workers compensation, fire, homeowners, commercial multiple peril, and others. Such promotion is accomplished by communication with those affected by insurance, presentation and discussion of papers, attendance at seminars and workshops, collection of a library, research, and other means. The membership of the CAS includes over 8,600 actuaries worldwide, employed by insurance companies, industry advisory organizations, national brokers, accounting firms, educational institutions, state insurance departments, the federal government, and independent consultants.

The CAS Research Council

The CAS Research Council was formed in 2021 to prioritize the research needs of the general insurance actuarial community. This work will augment the existing work of standing research working groups which focus on specific practice areas like ratemaking, reserving, reinsurance, and risk analysis. The operational oversight of projects will be designated to a project oversight group (POG) made up of CAS staff and volunteers.

Research Problem Description

The economic consequences of a cyber-attack are well known. Organizations may lose access to critical systems and data, they may have valuable intellectual property compromised, physical systems which rely on software for control may be rendered useless – or worse – may be misused to damage property. Moreover, cyber risk has a larger risk of contagion than many other risks. Successful attack strategies may be repeated. Organizations themselves may contribute to the spread of malware by infecting the systems of suppliers, employees, business partners and customers. Finally, the available data reflect a limited time horizon, during which exposures and the means by which vulnerabilities may be attacked are both changing rapidly.

Two years ago, the CAS published a research paper which explored the merits and considerations of various exposure bases for cyber insurance pricing. We are looking to build on that work to give practicing actuaries and risk managers clear and useful guidance on how to take exposure data and develop a sensible risk transfer price. The ideal research paper will have illustrative data and examples, which one may readily explore.

Project Requirements

The end product of the research should be a paper, saved as (or converted to) a Microsoft Word file. The length should be sufficient to give meaningful, practical guidance to practitioners in a way that is concise yet complete. This typically means a paper of 15-50 pages. Those page counts should be regarded as rough guidelines only.
Where actuarial/statistical methods are used, they should have sound foundations, rooted in established principles. With that understood, the techniques within a method should be intelligible to an actuary working in reserving. Moreover, a method’s output should be explainable to insurance industry decision makers who may not have the experience or education of an actuary.

Any accompanying code examples will be shared on the CAS GitHub site. All material on GitHub is released under the Mozilla Public License, version 2.0.

Proposal Requirements

Proposals should include a clear outline of the work that will be performed and the time frame in which it will be performed (including key dates). The proposal should be accompanied by the resumes of the researcher(s), indicating how their background, education, and experience bear on their qualifications to undertake the research.

The CAS contract will be awarded to the respondent who - in the judgment of the Reinsurance Research Committee and entirely based on their written proposal - is best able to perform the work as specified herein. If the committee determines that no proposal meets the requirements of the RFP, then no contract will be awarded.

Receipt of proposals will be acknowledged in a timely manner. Respondents who are not awarded the contract will be informed shortly thereafter.

Interested researchers should submit their proposals and any questions to:

Brian A. Fannin, Research Actuary
Casualty Actuarial Society
bfannin@casact.org
(919) 457-3439

Timeline

Interested parties are welcome to submit questions about the RFP. All questions and responses will be circulated to all who submit a proposal.


Week of April 25

RFP announcement

May 13, 2022

Question response

June 10, 2022

Final submission

June 24, 2022

Selection

Compensation

Compensation to researchers will be commensurate with the time required to carry out the work. Respondents should include an estimate of cost in their proposals. Total cost is not expected to exceed $30,000. Where a proposal exceeds this amount, sufficient justification should be provided by the respondent.

Presentation, Ownership and Publication of Report

As a condition of selection, the CAS requires that all rights, title, and interest, including copyright and patent, in and to the report be owned by the CAS. The selected researcher/research team must sign a formal research agreement that assigns all such rights to the CAS. In any publication of the report, the researcher(s) will receive appropriate credit with regard to authorship. The CAS may publish the report in its entirety, or any sections thereof, in any format and medium as it finds fit, including but not limited to CAS publications, and electronic versions such as on its Web site or physical storage media.

The researcher(s) should make every effort to be available to present the report at a CAS meeting or seminar.