Procedures and basic statistics to be used in magnitude control of equalisation reserves in Finland

Abstract

This report aims at describing the procedures and statistics prepared for use in calculation of the limits of the equalisation reserves of Finnish insurance companies. The report is based on work done by a committee which the Federation of Finnish Insurance Companies set up in 1962. Its purpose was to collect and work up the necessary statistics and to develop computational methods to be used in practice for the computation of equalisation reserves. In one respect the work was initiated by the Supervisory Service, which prepared new and more precise regulations concerning the determination of limits of the above reserves.Because solvency problems of insurance companies have had great attention in recent years internationally, and the Finnish equalisation reserves are closely related to them, the theme may be sufficiently interesting to be presented once more setting out practical results. The solvency problem among other questions has been dealt with by Drs. Pesonen and Pentikäinen in former colloquia. This report can be considered as a continuation of Dr. Pesonen's paper “Magnitude Control of Technical Reserves in Finland” submitted to the Lucerne Colloquium and my paper “A Procedure to Compute Values of the Generalised Poisson Function” to the same colloquium.The principles and theoretical formulae to be used in computation of the limits for the equalisation reserves have already been stated in the papers of Drs. Pesonen and Pentikainen. Other technical reserves are not dealt with here.The equalisation reserve is roughly defined as that part of the technical reserves which exceeds the conventional premium reserve and the claims reserve and which secures the company's solvability against random fluctuations of claims and fluctuation of the basic probabilities of the claims. The equalisation reserve E must be greater than a minimum Emin from solvability reasons and, because of taxation, should not exceed a maximum amount Emax.