The problem
Short-tail books can still surprise you.
Travel and medical are treated as short-tail, but medical inflation, currency movement, delayed reporting from overseas providers and large individual losses all inject volatility that triangle-only methods smooth over. When emerging experience turns, a reserve that looked comfortable can prove thin, and the news arrives late.
The mechanics are specific to these lines. An inpatient case abroad can develop for months after the triangle says it should have closed; a currency move reprices half the outstanding book overnight; one air-ambulance repatriation can distort a small cohort's factors for a year. None of this is exotic — but a method that only reads the triangle will keep being surprised by it.
What we deliver
Reserving support that shows its working.
How it works
From triangles to a view you can defend.
Build the data
We assemble clean development data, segmented in the ways that actually drive your volatility.
Estimate and document
We produce a central estimate with every method and assumption written down and traceable.
Stress the assumptions
Scenario and sensitivity testing show the range around the estimate, not just the point.
Monitor between reviews
Dashboards track emerging experience so a divergence is caught early, not at year end.
Under the hood
What we build into the estimate.
Eight components separate a defensible reserve from a hopeful one. Each is documented, each is stressed, and each can be challenged on its own terms.
Development by segment. Factors built on the segments that actually drive volatility: market, product, provider geography.
Medical inflation load. Observed cost trends separated from utilisation, so the forward view is more than history repeated.
Currency exposure. Outstanding liabilities mapped by settlement currency and stressed for movement.
Reporting-delay patterns. Overseas provider lags measured and built into the tail, not assumed away.
Large-loss treatment. Individual large claims separated so they inform the tail without distorting the base.
Seasonality. Travel-pattern peaks reflected in exposure and development, cohort by cohort.
Actual versus expected. Emerging experience tracked against assumptions continuously, between formal reviews.
Scenario grid. Inflation, delay and large-loss stresses combined, to show what breaks the estimate first.
What changes
Fewer surprises. Better conversations with capital.
You hold reserves with a documented view of the range around them, catch adverse development early, and can answer your board, auditors and reinsurers with evidence rather than reassurance.
A reserve is a forecast wearing an accountant's clothes. The useful question is not “what is the number?” but “what would have to be true for it to be wrong?”
THE TSP VIEWQuestions
What insurers ask us first.
No. We provide data-driven support, monitoring and scenario testing that strengthens the reserving process. Your actuarial function retains ownership of the reserves and the sign-off.
Short-tail does not mean low-volatility. Medical inflation, currency, delayed overseas reporting and large individual losses all move development in ways triangle-only methods can smooth over. We make that volatility visible.
Dashboards that compare actual claims development against what your reserves assume, updated between formal reviews, so an adverse trend is flagged early rather than discovered at year end.
Yes. Methods and assumptions are documented and traceable end to end, so the work stands up to actuarial peer review, audit and reinsurer scrutiny.
We slot in around it. Analysis lands ahead of your quarterly or annual review; monitoring runs between them. Your methods stay in place — ours are documented alongside, so the two views can be compared like for like.
Yes — that is where judgement matters most. We blend your experience with relevant benchmarks, state the credibility of each explicitly, and show how sensitive the estimate is to every assumption we have had to make.