Delta Dental Plan of Michigan

Proposer/liason: Toby L. Hall

Problem 1. Estimating monthly claims. Insurers are required to estimate a liability at the end of every month for dental services already performed, but for which payment has not been made. These are typically claims that have not yet been reported or are under investigation. The traditional methods of making this estimate are viewed as being inadequate in light of the computing power and accessibility of data. I will supply a list of articles from the actuarial literature which propose new methods. This project would involve implementing and evaluating the new methods, or possibly creating a new method.
There would be a fair amount of background reading required, but it would be a great way to get the students involved in the data. There would also be a fair amount of modeling creativity involved. The interesting thing here would be applying the new models to dental insurance. Some of these models have already been applied to medical insurance, car insurance, and professional liability insurance. Dental insurance, however, has unique characteristics which require a separate evaluation of the methods. To the best of my knowledge, no one has done this yet.

Problem 2. Fine-tuning forecasting methods. Proprietary considerations prevent an open description of this project but it would involve some pretty cool statistical analyses of recent data.

Toby L. Hall, ASA, MAAA
Associate Actuary
Delta Dental Plan of Michigan
Phone: (517) 347-5437
Fax: (517) 381-5571
thall@deltadentalmi.com

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