Given the relatively small number of policies sold and hence even fewer number of claims for a small insurance company... I fail to see how an actuary could do a proper job given the data limitations.
For example, if a small general insurance company was concerned about its loss ratios in parts of its business and employed an actuary to advise on adjusting premium rates to mitigate those (subject to the constraints of competitiveness)... with a small volume of data to work with I don't see how an actuary could seriously make recommendations and provide value compared to a non-actuary.
Surely an actuary employed in such a situation could feel obliged to make spurious adjustments to premium rates to be seen to be doing something when deep down the most appropriate action could be to say "just leave all the premium rates where they are" because losses are probably just there due to economic or underwriting cycle.... or skewed due to a few big claims because there's so little data to go on to come to any kind of reasonable conclusion!
Discuss. lol.
Last edited by a moderator: Nov 15, 2010