Pandemics: Insurance and Social Protection

This open access book collects expert contributions on actuarial modelling and related topics, from machine learning to legal aspects, and reflects on possible insurance designs during an epidemic/pandemic.

Starting by considering the impulse given by COVID-19 to the insurance industry and to actuarial research, the text covers compartment models, mortality changes during a pandemic, risk-sharing in the presence of low probability events, group testing, compositional data analysis for detecting data inconsistencies, behaviouristic aspects in fighting a pandemic, and insurers’ legal problems, amongst others.

Concluding with an essay by a practicing actuary on the applicability of the methods proposed, this interdisciplinary book is aimed at actuaries as well as readers with a background in mathematics, economics, statistics, finance, epidemiology, or sociology.

​Dr. Carmen Boado-Penas holds a Ph.D. in Actuarial Science from the University of Valencia (Spain). She has also published several articles on public pension systems and has cooperated on various projects related to pension systems at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency in Stockholm and at the Spanish Ministry of Labor and Immigration. In 2020, she received the BBVA Longevia award to support pension research. Her research interests are focused on pensions and automatic balancing mechanisms.

Dr. Julia Eisenberg is currently holding an Elise Richter fellowship, granted by FWF (Austrian Science Fund), at the Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, TU Wien, Austria. She received her doctorate at the University of Cologne, Germany, in 2010 and completed her habilitation (the highest qualification issued through the process of a university examination) at the TU Wien in 2019.
Her expertise is in stochastic optimal control in complex insurance risk models. A more recent research interest is in searching for alternative pension designs during ultra-low interest rate phases.

Dr. Sule Sahin is a lecturer in the Institute for Financial and Actuarial Mathematics, University of Liverpool. She completed her PhD at Actuarial Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh in 2010 based on a PhD scholarship from Higher Education Council of Turkey.
Other than Liverpool, she held an associate professor position at Hacettepe University until September 2020. Her research interests are economic scenario generators, yield curve modelling, compensation for loss of earnings, mortality modelling, pension guarantees and prioritisation of risks in social security systems.