What is Nodal Connections

For hundreds of years, actuaries used pencil and paper to perform their statistical analysis It was a long time before they had the help of a mechanical adding machine. Only recently have they had the benefit of computers. As recently as 1981, computers were not considered important to the process of insurance underwriting. Leading experts in insurance underwriting believed that the judgment factor involved in the underwriting process was too complex for any computer to handle as effectively as a human underwriter (Holtom, 1981). Recent research in the application of technology to the underwriting process has shown that Holtom’s statement may no longer hold true (Gaunt, 1972; Kitchens, 2000; Rose, 1986). The time for computers to take on an important role in the insurance underwriting process may be upon us. The author intends to illustrate the applicability of artificial neural networks to the insurance underwriting process.