Studie + Carriere

Movir Insurance in Nieuwegein would like to hire a student econometrics, actuarial science or applied mathematics who wants to do his masters-internship on a quantitative topic.

Movir Insurance
Movir is a Dutch niche insurer in the field of disability insurance for self employed people such as Doctors, Medical Specialists, Lawyers, Accountants and Actuaries. Movir has 125 persons staff and a balance sheet total of € 1.5 Billion and is considered to be the leading disability insurance company in its niche. Movir Insurance is since 2001 a 100% subsidiary of ING Insurance. Movir has access to the wide knowledge of actuaries with ING Group, but is as a separate legal entity unique within ING Group as a mono-product non-life insurance organisation. As such Movir will need to establish her own unique reinsurance solution for her individual insurance risks with an eye on Solvency II and Economic Capital discussions within ING. Movir will do this in cooperation with ING Corporate Reinsurance.

Subject
Movir has several reinsurance treaties, to be renewed per 01/01/2008.
We want you to establish:

• The optimal reinsurance cover for the coming three years period.
  • Optimal in terms of premium and required economic capital
  • Within the ING Group Risk Tolerance boundaries
  • Based on current solvability, profit sharing and dividend policy of Movir
  • To be completed before 01/10/2007
• A framework that can be used on annual basis before 31/12/2007
• Knowledge transfer within Movir and (if applicable) within ING Group.

Background
Non-Life?: Disability insurances are typical non-life insurances, with a compound claims distribution, however due to the longer duration of payments also typical life-insurance issues will be touched such as the importance of mortality and investment income.

Economic capital: in order to remain solvent after an event an insurer has to set aside a certain economic capital (EC). The EC is mostly calculated on VaR-type of calculations, with generally a high confidence interval (1 year) and a high survival probability (99,5%, 99,9%, 99,95%,…). Currently most insurers are changing their risk management towards an EC based management. This is stimulated by the upcoming Solvency II regime within the EU from 2010 (?) onwards.

Catastrophes: For a mono-product company like Movir issues like limited diversification and increased result volatility play an important role in the above mentioned challenge. Some examples of considerations are one-off adverse disability experience due to terrorism, environmental damage or pandemics, uncertainty in the future trend of mortality and the unavailability of specific reinsurance covers or derivatives in the capital markets.

Knowledge and literature
Due to the nature of the basic product and the subject of research, we require knowledge of Markov chains, management accounting principles and standard operations research tools.

There is some literature on Re-Insurance, but not exhaustive. Most articles deal with optimisation of the premium expenses. We are not aware of articles that deal exactly with our specific problem in relation to economic capital. Through ING’s knowledge and information centre we have access to several academic libraries, expertise of ING and several research firms.

Our offer
We provide a subject for a thesis in relation to a very actual topic. You will use existing quantitative techniques in a new environment, where literature study is necessary. Within ING there are enough people to provide support and knowledge of the underlying products. We actively support the student and we are very interested in the results as basis for future management decisions. Consistent application of available (often general) knowledge is one of the cornerstones of the success of Movir.

The intern is paid compensation and the internship gives the possibility of getting to know the actuarial world and management accounting from inside. Often intern-students start their career at Movir/ING Group on the basis of the contacts they make during that period, your Movir sparring partner is a proof of this statement. During the internship you are considered to be part of the team. The team is informal and just like Movir as company; we want to be on the leading edge of the application of disability insurance theory and knowledge in practice.

Our requirements
We are looking for students who preferably speak and read Dutch and English very well, as the working environment at Movir is totally Dutch, but within ING Corporate Reinsurance and ING Group level this is English, just like the theory and the final document (for possible further distribution within ING or in the Academic world).

In order to answer the questions for this thesis the applicant:

• Is experienced in building simulation based computer programs;
• Is able to find his way in a subject where there is no abundant literature;
• Is creative in combining available techniques in order to come to a workable solution;
• Wants to apply different quantitative techniques jointly.

Practical issues
If you are interested you can contact Peter de Bruijne (030 – 607.8795 peter.de.bruijne@movir.nl). You will also get support from ING Corporate Reinsurance.

The office is located in Nieuwegein close to the fast-tram to Utrecht C.S.
We hope that the internship can start before summer 2007.

Movir
Peter de Bruijne