Factors Driving Duration to Cross-selling in Non-life Insurance: New Empirical Evidence from Switzerland

Customer relationship management and marketing analytics have become critical for non-life insurers operating in highly competitive markets. As it is easier to develop an existing customer than to acquire a new one, cross-selling and retention are key activities. In this research, we focus on both car and household-liability insurance products and consider the time a customer owning only a single product takes before buying the other product at the same insurer. Based on longitudinal consumer data from a Swiss insurance company covering the period from 2011 to 2015, we aim to study the factors driving the duration to cross-selling. Given the different dynamics observed in both products, we separately study the car and household-liability insurance customer cohorts. Considering the framework of survival analysis, we provide descriptive statistics and Kaplan-Meier estimates along major customer characteristics, contract history and distribution channel usage. For the econometric analysis of the duration, we compare the results from Cox and accelerated failure time models. We are able to characterize the times related to the buying behavior for both products through several covariates. Our results indicate that the policyholder age, the place of residence, the contract premium, the number of contracts held, and the initial access channel used for contracting influence the duration to cross-selling. In particular, our results underline the importance of the tied agent channel and the differences along the geographic region and the urbanicity of the place of residence. By quantifying the effects of the above factors, we extend the understanding of customer behavior and provide a basis for developing models to time marketing actions in insurance companies

Assessing the Performance of Random Forests for Modeling Claim Severity in Collision Car Insurance

For calculating non-life insurance premiums actuaries traditionally rely on separate severity and frequency models using covariates to explain the claims loss exposure. In this paper, we focus on the claim severity. First, we build two reference models, a generalized linear model and a generalized additive model, relying on a log-normal distribution of the severity and including the most significant factors. Thereby, we follow Henckaerts et al. (2018) to relate the continuous variables to the response in a nonlinear way. In the second step, we tune two random forest models, one for the claim severity and one for the log-transformed claim severity where the latter requires a transformation of the predicted results. We compare the prediction performance of the different models using the relative error, the root mean squared error and the goodness-of-lift statistics in combination with goodness-of-fit statistics (Denuit et al. 2019). In our application, we rely on a dataset of a Swiss collision insurance portfolio covering the loss exposure of the period from 2011 to 2015 and including observations from 81 309 settled claims with a total amount of CHF 184 mio. In the analysis, we use the data from 2011 to 2014 for training and from 2015 for testing. Our results indicate that the use of a log-normal transformation of the severity is not leading to performance gains with random forests. However, random forests with a log-normal transformation are the favorite choice to explain right-skewed claims. Finally, when considering all indicators, we conclude that the generalized additive model has the best overall performance

What policyholder and contract features determine the evolution of non-life insurance customer relationships? : A case study analysis

Purpose – Over the last decade, technological and social trends have significantly influenced the relationship between customers and insurers. New buying patterns, price comparison platforms and the usage of different interaction channels driving single-product purchases and impacting lapses have influenced insurers’ customer portfolios and development. The purpose of this paper is to study the features driving the customer relationship along three areas, namely, customer acquisition, development and retention. Design/methodology/approach – After defining 14 related hypotheses, the authors use econometric analyses to quantitatively support these hypotheses in the three areas of interest. The authors build on a large-scale longitudinal data set from a Swiss insurance company covering the period from 2005 to 2014 and including 2,757,000 customer-years. The data comprise information on private customers, their contract history, including coverage and losses and the channels used for buying insurance. This analysis focuses on the two most common non-life insurance products, namely, household/liability and car insurance. Findings – The authors provide descriptive statistics and results from econometric analyses to determine the significant features and patterns affecting customer development and retention. Among the main results, the authors underline the significant influence on cross-selling given by the customer’s age and the interaction channel. Customers from rural regions are more loyal and likely to conduct cross-buying when compared to their peers from urban regions. Car insurance holders are more likely to lapse than household/liability insurance clients. Finally, while newly acquired customers tend to buy only a single product, the authors show the importance of cross-selling for retaining customers. In fact, customer retention is positively influenced by the number of products hold. Research limitations/implications – This work is relevant for academics and practitioners alike, adding a quantitative basis to the understanding of managing customer relationships and for the development of further prospective models. Further work could investigate or add products, extend the study to other companies and focus on customer development with time. Originality/value – This study explores a large-scale longitudinal data set. The analyses of customer acquisition, development and retention can support insurers to construct their own models for customer relationship management

Nuclear signatures in high-harmonic generation from laser-driven muonic atoms

High-harmonic generation from muonic atoms exposed to intense laser fields is considered. Our particular interest lies in effects arising from the finite nuclear mass and size. We numerically perform a fully quantum mechanical treatment of the muon-nucleus dynamics by employing modified soft-core and hard-core potentials. It is shown that the position of the high-energy cutoff of the harmonic spectrum depends on the nuclear mass, while the height of the spectral plateau is sensitive to the nuclear radius. We also demonstrate that $\gamma$-ray harmonics can be generated from muonic atoms in ultrastrong VUV fields, which have potential to induce photo-nuclear reactions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

A solid state light-matter interface at the single photon level

Coherent and reversible mapping of quantum information between light and matter is an important experimental challenge in quantum information science. In particular, it is a decisive milestone for the implementation of quantum networks and quantum repeaters. So far, quantum interfaces between light and atoms have been demonstrated with atomic gases, and with single trapped atoms in cavities. Here we demonstrate the coherent and reversible mapping of a light field with less than one photon per pulse onto an ensemble of 10 millions atoms naturally trapped in a solid. This is achieved by coherently absorbing the light field in a suitably prepared solid state atomic medium. The state of the light is mapped onto collective atomic excitations on an optical transition and stored for a pre-programmed time up of to 1 mu s before being released in a well defined spatio-temporal mode as a result of a collective interference. The coherence of the process is verified by performing an interference experiment with two stored weak pulses with a variable phase relation. Visibilities of more than 95% are obtained, which demonstrates the high coherence of the mapping process at the single photon level. In addition, we show experimentally that our interface allows one to store and retrieve light fields in multiple temporal modes. Our results represent the first observation of collective enhancement at the single photon level in a solid and open the way to multimode solid state quantum memories as a promising alternative to atomic gases.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, version submitted on June 27 200

Properties of 8^{8}Be and 12^{12}C deduced from the folding--potential model

The $\alpha$--$\alpha$ differential cross sections are analyzed in the optical model using a double--folded potential. With the knowledge of this potential bound and resonance--state properties of $\alpha$--cluster states in $^{8}$Be and $^{12}$C as well as astrophysical S--factors of $^{4}$He($\alpha$,$\gamma$)$^{8}$Be and $^{8}$Be($\alpha$,$\gamma$)$^{12}$C are calculated. $\Gamma_{\gamma}$--widths and B(E2)--values are deduced.Comment: 2 pages LaTeX, 2 figures can be obtained from the author

Interference of Spontaneous Emission of Light from two Solid-State Atomic Ensembles

We report an interference experiment of spontaneous emission of light from two distant solid-state ensembles of atoms that are coherently excited by a short laser pulse. The ensembles are Erbium ions doped into two LiNbO3 crystals with channel waveguides, which are placed in the two arms of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The light that is spontaneously emitted after the excitation pulse shows first-order interference. By a strong collective enhancement of the emission, the atoms behave as ideal two-level quantum systems and no which-path information is left in the atomic ensembles after emission of a photon. This results in a high fringe visibility of 95%, which implies that the observed spontaneous emission is highly coherent

Epigenetic gene regulation by Janus kinase 1 in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

Janus kinases (JAKs) classically signal by activating STAT transcription factors but can also regulate gene expression by epigenetically phosphorylating histone H3 on tyrosine 41 (H3Y41-P). In diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCLs), JAK signaling is a feature of the activated B-cell (ABC) subtype and is triggered by autocrine production of IL-6 and IL-10. Whether this signaling involves STAT activation, epigenetic modification of chromatin, or both mechanisms is unknown. Here we use genetic and pharmacological inhibition to show that JAK1 signaling sustains the survival of ABC DLBCL cells. Whereas STAT3 contributed to the survival of ABC DLBCL cell lines, forced STAT3 activity could not protect these cells from death following JAK1 inhibition, suggesting epigenetic JAK1 action. JAK1 regulated the expression of nearly 3,000 genes in ABC DLBCL cells, and the chromatin surrounding many of these genes was modified by H3Y41-P marks that were diminished by JAK1 inhibition. These JAK1 epigenetic target genes encode important regulators of ABC DLBCL proliferation and survival, including IRF4, MYD88, and MYC. A small molecule JAK1 inhibitor cooperated with the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib in reducing IRF4 levels and acted synergistically to kill ABC DLBCL cells, suggesting that this combination should be evaluated in clinical trials.This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH National Cancer Institute, the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison) start-up funds, KL2 Scholar Awards UL1TR0000427 and KL2TR000428, the National Cancer Institute Grant 1R01 CA187299 (to L.R.), and the UW–Madison T32 Hematology Training Award T32 HL07899 (to A.C.D.)