Research Grants

The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) is pleased to announce its individual grant research recipients for 2025. They include:

• “Designing Bonus-Malus Systems Under Frequency-Severity Dependence” by Asrar Alyafie and Jorge Yslas
• “Using Large Language Models to Generate New Features from Text Data for Loss Prediction” by Guojun Gan and Christopher Shultz
• “Catastrophic Risk Pooling in the Era of Climate Change” by Fan Yang, Didier Serre, and Yuxuan Guo
• “Loss Reserving with Textual Description of Claims” by Gee Y. Lee and A. Nii-Armah Okine
• “Enhancing Crop Yield Predictions Using Spatio-Temporal Dependence Modeling, Bayesian Frameworks, and an R Library Development” by Mélina Mailhot and Marie Michaelides
• “Agentic Artificial Intelligence Models for Actuarial Workflows” by Robert Richardson and Josh Meyers
• “Enhancing Tilted Density Estimation in Reinforcement Learning (RL) for Optimized Risk Management” by Xing Wang and Jackie Siaw Tze Wong
• “Secure Actuarial Data Collaboration Engine (SCALE) using Federated Learning, Zero Knowledge Proofs, and Encryption Techniques” by Lu Xiong and David Koegel
• “AI-Driven Cyber Breach Risk Prediction: Capturing Complex Dependence via Deep Learning Models” by Maochao Xu (Co-sponsored with the Society of Actuaries)

Grant proposals are submitted through the Individual Grants Competition, jointly sponsored by the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Knowledge Extension Research. Projects may be theoretical or empirical in nature, but the key criterion is that the research should be a significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge in actuarial science. The nine CAS-funded projects were selected by the Research Grants Task Force, chaired by Don Closter, ACAS, from 17 proposals.

"These projects underscore the importance of actuarial science in our ever-changing world,” said Morgan Bugbee, FCAS, CAS Vice President–Research and Practice Advancement. “From climate change to cyber risk to artificial intelligence, these projects will support CAS members as they develop new skills, apply new techniques and advance in their profession.” 

An announcement for submitting proposals for the 2026 Individual Grants Competition will be announced this fall.

The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute's Committee on Knowledge Extension Research (CKER) announce the 2025 Individual Grant Competition to support the advancement of knowledge in actuarial science.

The proposed research project, which may be theoretical or empirical in nature, should have the potential to contribute significantly to knowledge advancement in actuarial science.

Interested parties must submit a Letter of Intent no longer than two pages to Caitlin Cummings at Research-CKER@soa.org by October 23, 2024. Researchers who are invited to submit proposals for funding consideration will receive applications on November 20, 2024. Completed applications will be due by January 15, 2025.

For more information, please see the Individual Grant Announcement. Projects awarded in 2024 by the CAS were announced in June.

The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) is pleased to announce its individual grant research recipients for 2024. They include:

• “Applications of Graph Theory in Territorial Ratemaking” by Marco De Virgilis and Daniel Lupton
• “Development of Telematics Risk Scores in Accordance with Regulatory Compliance” by Himchan Jeong and Bin Zou
• “Entity-Specific Cyber Risk Assessment Using Insurtech-Empowered Risk Factors and State-of-the-Art Machine Learning Algorithms” by Linfeng Zhang and Zhiyu Quan
• “Evaluating Model Risk in Property and Casualty Insurance” by Yang Lu and Hanieh Amjadian
• “Integrated Frequency and Severity Modeling for Extreme Losses” by Zhiwei Tong and Haibo Liu
• “Interpretable and Fair Insurance Risk Pricing Using Causal Models” by Fei Huang and Joshua Loftus
• “A New Approach to Detecting Insurance Fraud” by Liang Hong
• “Unveiling Nuances in Categorical Variables to Enhance Information Integration in Actuarial Applications” by Kun Shi

Grant proposals are submitted through the Individual Grants Competition, jointly sponsored by the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Knowledge Extension Research. Projects may be theoretical or empirical in nature, with the key criterion that they should contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge in actuarial science. The eight CAS-funded projects were selected by the Research Grants Task Force, chaired by Don Closter, ACAS, from among nearly 50 proposals.

"This year's grant projects reflect topics that are at the forefront of our members' interest as shown through the latest Quinquennial survey, including machine learning and cybersecurity,” said CAS Vice President-Research and Development, Morgan Bugbee, FCAS. “Investing in these projects supports CAS members in developing new skills, learning new techniques and, ultimately, enhancing their professional capabilities.”

An announcement for submitting proposals for the 2025 Individual Research Grants program will be announced this fall.

The Society of Actuaries’ Committee on Knowledge Extension Research and the Casualty Actuarial Society announce the 2024 Individual Grant Competition to support the advancement of knowledge in actuarial science.

The project may be either theoretical or empirical in nature. A key criterion is that the project should have the potential to contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge in actuarial science.

You are encouraged to submit a brief letter of intent (no more than two pages) to Erika Schulty at eschulty@soa.org by October 23, 2023. Application forms will be distributed by November 20, 2023, to researchers being invited to submit full proposals for funding consideration.

For more information, please see the Individual Grant Announcement.