All property and casualty insurers are required to carry out loss reserving as a statutory accounting function. Thus, loss reserving is an essential sphere of activity, and one with its own specialized body of knowledge. While few books have been devoted to the topic, the amount of published research literature on loss reserving has almost doubled in size during the last 15 years of the 20th century. Greg Taylor's book aims to provide a comprehensive treatment of loss reserving that reflects contemporary research advances to date in 1999. Divided into two parts, the book covers both the conventional techniques widely used in practice, and more specialized loss reserving techniques employing stochastic models. Part I on deterministic models, covers very practical issues through the abundant use of numerical examples that fully develop the techniques under consideration. Part II on stochastic models, begins with a chapter that sets up the additional theoretical material needed to illustrate stochastic modelling. The remaining chapters in Part II are self-contained, and thus can be approached independently of each other.
A special feature of the book is the use throughout of a single real life data set to illustrate the numerical examples and new techniques presented. The data set illustrates most of the difficult situations presented in actuarial practice. The book should meet the needs for a reference work as well as for a textbook on loss reserving.