2019 Cas case competition

On January the 28th, 2019, Paul Birch and Rafael Bergerman, on behalf of Actuarial Science Club, organized the first CAS Case Competition. The case was concentrated on coming up with a new phone warranty product for a fictional insurance company. It required analyzing a pool of claim data and offering a competitive pricing strategy. The candidates had a week to came up with a solution and then present it in front of judges who represented CAS. The participants were divided into two categories: upperclassmen (having a junior or a senior student in the group) and underclassmen. Among the underclassmen the winning team was Noah Donten, Aidan Lake, Akash Patel, and Vince Birch whereas among the upperclassmen the winning team was Natalie Lo, Grace McStravock, Nicolette Nybro, and Ichen "Ivan" Yen. Congratulations to the winners! To provide you more feedback on the event we reached out to a member of the winning team, Nicolette Nybro:

Hello Nicolette, what was your contribution to the team?
Everyone on our team contributed to the case in their own unique way. Natalie, who isn’t an actuarial major but loves case competitions, was in charge of preparing the slide deck. Grace and Ivan being upperclassmen actuarial students understood pricing strategies, so they worked on the bulk of the solutions. As they worked, we brainstormed ideas, they explained to me the concepts, and they allowed me to help out where I could. My main contribution to the team was producing visualizations in Tableau of the given data. These visuals were used to analyze the trends in cell phone type and claim type so that we could plan our pricing strategies accordingly

Which actuarial concepts did you find useful in solving the case?
The actuarial concepts we found useful were the loss and combined ratios which are used to measure the profitability of an insurance company. They relate the total losses (and expenses for the combined ratio) to the total premium amount collected. We also used generalized linear model (GLM) outputs in R studio to demonstrate some key significance factors for the different types of claims.

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What did you enjoy the most about this competition?
My favorite part of the competition was learning from everyone in my group. I had never learned about pricing before or knew much about property and casualty insurance, but Grace and Ivan had a general understanding of it. They helped me understand concepts and challenged me to play around with the data and formulas myself. Natalie knew how to present our information to the judges in a compelling, professional, and clear manner, so I enjoyed learning tips from her as well.

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What tips would you give to students interested in succeeding in such cases?
​Meet with your group frequently and consistently throughout the duration of the competition. Delegating tasks to each group member based on their strengths is a great way to start and ensure efficiency. Learn from other group members as well as be open minded and respectful about ideas presented. Lastly, smile and be confident when presenting your ideas in front of the judges.