Explainable Boosting Machine for Predicting Claim Severity and Frequency in Car Insurance

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Krùpovà, Markéta, Rachdi, Nabil, Guibert, Quentin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Krùpovà, Markéta
Rachdi, Nabil
Guibert, Quentin
author_facet Krùpovà, Markéta
Rachdi, Nabil
Guibert, Quentin
contents In a context of constant increase in competition and heightened regulatory pressure, accuracy, actuarial precision, as well as transparency and understanding of the tariff, are key issues in non-life insurance. Traditionally used generalized linear models (GLM) result in a multiplicative tariff that favors interpretability. With the rapid development of machine learning and deep learning techniques, actuaries and the rest of the insurance industry have adopted these techniques widely. However, there is a need to associate them with interpretability techniques. In this paper, our study focuses on introducing an Explainable Boosting Machine (EBM) model that combines intrinsically interpretable characteristics and high prediction performance. This approach is described as a glass-box model and relies on the use of a Generalized Additive Model (GAM) and a cyclic gradient boosting algorithm. It accounts for univariate and pairwise interaction effects between features and provides naturally explanations on them. We implement this approach on car insurance frequency and severity data and extensively compare the performance of this approach with classical competitors: a GLM, a GAM, a CART model and an Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) algorithm. Finally, we examine the interpretability of these models to capture the main determinants of claim costs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_21321
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Explainable Boosting Machine for Predicting Claim Severity and Frequency in Car Insurance
Krùpovà, Markéta
Rachdi, Nabil
Guibert, Quentin
Applications
Machine Learning
In a context of constant increase in competition and heightened regulatory pressure, accuracy, actuarial precision, as well as transparency and understanding of the tariff, are key issues in non-life insurance. Traditionally used generalized linear models (GLM) result in a multiplicative tariff that favors interpretability. With the rapid development of machine learning and deep learning techniques, actuaries and the rest of the insurance industry have adopted these techniques widely. However, there is a need to associate them with interpretability techniques. In this paper, our study focuses on introducing an Explainable Boosting Machine (EBM) model that combines intrinsically interpretable characteristics and high prediction performance. This approach is described as a glass-box model and relies on the use of a Generalized Additive Model (GAM) and a cyclic gradient boosting algorithm. It accounts for univariate and pairwise interaction effects between features and provides naturally explanations on them. We implement this approach on car insurance frequency and severity data and extensively compare the performance of this approach with classical competitors: a GLM, a GAM, a CART model and an Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) algorithm. Finally, we examine the interpretability of these models to capture the main determinants of claim costs.
title Explainable Boosting Machine for Predicting Claim Severity and Frequency in Car Insurance
topic Applications
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21321