Casualty Catastrophe Model RFP Issued by CAS Reinsurance Working Group

The Casualty Actuarial Society’s (CAS) Reinsurance Working Group is offering up to $45,000 to researchers either within or outside the property/casualty industry to develop a casualty catastrophe modeling solution for property/casualty reinsurance and/or excess insurance pricing. Proposals are due June 11, 2025.

Research Problem Description

A casualty catastrophe, according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ General Insurance Research Organising Committee, is “an event that causes $100 million or more in direct insured losses from all causes to casualty policies (of all types), with one or more policies and insurers impacted.” The CAS has published recent papers using this 2008 definition.

While the definition has been a practical starting point for exploration, discussion and analysis, reinsurers covering casualty catastrophe losses face a broader modeling challenge similar to catastrophic weather events that impact property losses: How can actuaries ensure that casualty models capture all potential material losses, including those not adequately represented in past data, as accurately as possible?

Proposal Requirements

The CAS is asking researchers to develop a new (or substantively extend an existing) practical and well-justified modeling solution for casualty CATs that can be integrated into reinsurance pricing and/or excess insurance pricing for one or more casualty lines of business such as product and general liability.

The model should be:

• Structured and parameterized to appropriately reflect potential casualty CAT losses.
• Flexible enough to adapt to the evolving nature of the risks over time.
• Straightforwardly applicable to a wide range of reinsurance (or excess insurance) pricing use cases.
• Rooted in established principles of mathematical statistics, predictive modeling or other established fields with sound mathematical foundations.

The model’s components and parameters should be intelligible to an actuary working in reinsurance and excess insurance pricing without requiring extensive familiarity with advanced topics such as health insurance, supply chain management, construction, engineering, industry contagion, litigation management, or case law. Additionally, the model, methods and processes should be explainable to insurance industry decision makers who may not have actuarial or statistical education or experience.

Code or sample worksheets should provide easy-to-follow calculations and enable auditing and assumption adjustment; and material model assumptions, limitations and uncertainties should be clearly communicated and quantified where appropriate.

In addition to producing a CAS-published research paper, the selected researchers must also deliver an executive summary of the paper (two to three pages) suitable as a blog post or magazine article. This summary should highlight the key takeaways from the paper and be understandable by a non-technical audience.

Submitting Proposals

Proposals should include a clear outline of the work that will be performed and the corresponding time frame, including key dates. The proposal should be accompanied by the resumes of the researcher(s), indicating how their backgrounds and education qualify them for this research. The $45,000 project funding includes money to acquire or license necessary data.

A CAS contract will be awarded to the respondent who, in the judgment of the Reinsurance Working Group, is best able to perform the work as specified. If the group determines that no proposal meets the requirements of the RFP, no contract will be awarded.

Interested parties are welcome to submit questions about the RFP. All questions and responses will be circulated to those respondents who have submitted questions or who have expressed their intent to submit proposals by June 11, 2025. Submit proposals Annmarie Geddes Baribeau, CAS Research Manager, and copy Elizabeth Smith, CAS Director of Publications and Research, by June 11, 2025. Proposal submissions should write “Casualty CATs Proposal” in the subject line. Receipt of proposals will be acknowledged in a timely manner.

Compensation

Compensation will be commensurate with the time required. Respondents should include a cost estimate, which should not exceed $45,000. Authors must report use of artificial intelligence, if any, while producing research. Authors will be required to upload their final paper electronically in the CAS’s ScholarOne system.

Presentation, Ownership and Publication of Report

As a condition of selection, the CAS requires that all rights, title, and interests, including copyright and patent rights, 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 authorship credit.

The CAS may publish the report in its entirety or in part, in any format and medium as it finds fit, including CAS publications, electronic versions on its website or physical storage media. To encourage research adoption, the CAS requires that the final work product’s code and data be placed in the CAS’s GitHub repository, https://github.com/casact, under the MPL2.0 license.

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

Timeline

About the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS)

The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) is a leading international organization for credentialing, professional education and research. Founded in 1914, the CAS is the world’s only actuarial organization focused exclusively on property-casualty risks and serves over 11,000 members worldwide. CAS members are sought after globally for their insights and ability to apply analytics to solve insurance and risk management problems.

As the world’s premier P&C actuarial research organization, the CAS reaches practicing actuaries across the globe with thought-leading concepts and solutions. The CAS has been conducting research since its inception. Today, the CAS provides thousands of open-source research papers, including its prestigious publication, Variance — all of which advance actuarial science and enhance the P&C insurance industry. Learn more at casact.org. 

About the Reinsurance Working Group

The Reinsurance Working Group addresses actuarial issues related to property and casualty ceded and assumed reinsurance. The group's charge includes furthering the development and dissemination of actuarial practice, theory and principles of reinsurance; identifying topics for research and discussion; monitoring professional developments and regulatory activities; establishing liaisons with other organizations working in this area; and sponsoring panels, seminars and other public forums on reinsurance issues.