Presenter(s): Chirag Shah, Gallagher Re; Jiten Voralia, FIAA, FCAS, Everest; Nick Nudo, Aon Reinsurance Solutions
Moderator(s): James McNally, MBA, BA, CPCU, RPLU+, ARM, ARe, Navigators Re, A Brand of The Hartford

Description: Please join us for a conversation with industry leaders regarding the current state of the Casualty market. Panelists will discuss various perspectives on the health of the line. The session will touch on historical experience, the current and projected rate environment, and broader macroeconomic conditions. Please note that this session is closed to the media.

Presenter(s): Edmund Douglas, FCAS, MAAA, QBE North America; Mallika Bender, FCAS, MAAA, Casualty Actuarial Society
Moderator(s): Brian Mullen, American Family Insurance

Description: Actuarial judgment is critical to our day-to-day work. This judgment is honed through years of experience, and it becomes instinctive over time. However, when we work in a state of cognitive ease, we’re more susceptible to cognitive biases arising from our reliance on heuristics. These mental shortcuts help us make decisions quickly, but they can also lead to systematic errors in how we interpret data and communicate uncertainty. This session explores common forms of cognitive biases that are particularly relevant to actuaries in our technical and strategic roles. From anchoring to confirmation bias, availability heuristics and others, attendees will see how these cognitive biases may influence our work and contribute to suboptimal decision-making. In addition, we’ll explore how systematic, process-based strategies, not just awareness of our own biases, can help mitigate the impact of biases in actuarial work.

Presenter(s): Navine Aggarwal, JD, MBA, Ethos Specialty; Jeffrey Zeitler, ACAS, Aon; Kristen Hoffman, ACAS, Ryan Transactional Risk
Moderator(s): Xuan You, FCAS, Munich Re

Description: This session will explore the evolution of transactional liability insurance and provide an updated market view for reinsurers and capacity providers. We will review developments in policy coverage, underwriting trends, and the changing role of the product within M&A transactions. The presentation will also examine historical loss experience and performance data to help frame the underlying risk characteristics of the class. The goal is to provide a balanced perspective on both the opportunities and challenges facing the market.

Presenter(s): Lauren Train, FCAS, Crum & Forster; Jess Fung, FCAS, MAAA, Guy Carpenter; Christopher Shafer, OdysseyRe
Moderator(s): Wenyi Zhang, FCAS, Everest Re

Description: This session will provide an overview of the current state of cyber insurance market. Speakers will discuss the current rate environment, industry loss performance, and hot topics such AI, Privacy class action, coverage creep, etc. Speakers will also discuss in details the severity and frequency trends, tail considerations, and how to navigate a soft market.

Presenter(s): Tsz Chai Fung, PhD, Georgia State University
Moderator(s): Li Li Lin, FCAS, Lancashire Insurance Group

Description: Social inflation, liability loss costs rising faster than economic inflation, has become a major driver of reinsurance volatility, yet it is often measured using simple trend charts that can be misleading when the mix of cases changes over time. In this session, we use a large database of U.S. jury verdicts and settlements to quantify social inflation through multiple channels that matter to reinsurers: plaintiff win rates (frequency), settlement propensity (frequency), and verdict/settlement severity.

We introduce practical, case-mix-adjusted indices that separate “true” social inflation from shifts in what kinds of cases are being litigated (e.g., more complex cases, more corporate defendants) and from evolving litigation tactics (e.g., increased use of experts and attorneys). We also show how to quantify uncertainty around these estimates, critical given heavy-tailed verdict outcomes and limited trial volume. Results highlight why verdict severity is the dominant contributor to overall inflation, why settlement severity often shows weaker signals, and how trends differ by case type, defendant characteristics, and legal environment (e.g., tort caps and third-party litigation funding rules). Attendees will leave with a usable framework to interpret social inflation signals and translate them into reinsurance pricing, reserving, and risk appetite decisions.