Fairness of predictive models: an application to insurance markets

Funded Projects
Research
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Actuarial

Fairness of predictive models: an application to insurance markets

This project is led by Arthur Charpentier, Professor in the Department of Mathematics 
at the University of Quebec in Montreal. 
Duration of the project: 2023-2026

This project addresses biases within the automatic artificial intelligence algorithms utilized to determine optimal pricing in individual policies. Its aim is to mitigate or eliminate such biases, which could lead to inequities or discriminatory practices based on factors such as gender, race, religion, or origin in the coverage provided by insurers or reinsurers to policyholders.

The research topic has both theoretical significance, as it involves enhancing control over the "black box" nature of AI-based models, and practical importance, as it aims to reduce risks associated with discrimination and inequality. Given the increasing influence of social networks and the consequential reputational challenges faced by insurers and reinsurers, this issue is particularly relevant and timely.

Fields of research / technical cooperation 
Actuarial science

 

Arthur Charpentier, PhD, Fellow of the French Institute of Actuaries*, is full professor at UQAM, Montreal, Canada, and Université de Rennes, in France. He is member of the editorial board of the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the ASTIN Bulletin, and Risks. He edited, a few years ago, Computational Actuarial Science with R (CRC), and more recently wrote Insurance, Biases, Discrimination and Fairness (Springer). He is also the former director of the Data Science for Actuaries program of the French Institute of Actuaries. He is a Louis Bachelier Fellow, and his recent work is about climate change and predictive modeling insurance, more specifically in the context of fairness and discrimination.

Alma mater: MSc in actuarial science ENSAE (1999, Paristech, France), MSc in mathematical economics Paris Dauphine (1999, PSL, France), PhD in applied mathematics KU Leuven (2006, Belgium), HDR* in applied mathematics Université de Rennes (2016, France).    Arthur Charpentier - Curriculum Vitae     Arthur Charpentier - Blog

 

Book
Insurance, Biases, Discrimination and Fairness (Springer)

Overview of the book
Author: Arthur Charpentier

  • An account of fairness in predictive models
  • Discusses fairness issues arising from big data and algorithms
  • Addresses a topic of high interest to actuaries and regulators

 

 

Project activities & events

Accordion

  • Article (FR) - "Des primes d’assurance personnalisées moins chères grâce à l’IA ? Voici pourquoi il s’agit d’une pente glissante" | The Conversation - August 5, 2025 

  • Article (FR) - "Les événements climatiques extrêmes ne sont plus des risques marginaux, et le secteur bancaire tarde à en prendre la mesure"| Le Monde - July 7, 2025

  • Article (EN) - "Sequential Conditional Transport on Probabilistic Graphs for Interpretable Counterfactual Fairness", article published | Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence - April 2025

  • Article (EN) -"Moral Maze", article published by the Actuary, magazine of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) in the UK  - March/April 2025

  • Article (EN) - "EquiPy: Sequential Fairness using Optimal Transport in Python", article / python codes - March 2025

  • Article (EN) -"Mitigating Discrimination in Insurance with Wasserstein Barycenters", article published in the Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD 2023)  - February 2025

  • Article [FR] - "Incendies à Los Angeles : « La situation actuelle menace non seulement le marché de l’assurance, mais aussi l’économie californienne, dans son ensemble »" - Le Monde - January 2025

  • Paper (EN) - Abstract - "Selection bias in insurance: why portfolio-specific fairness fails to extend market-wide" by Olivier Côté, Marie-Pier Côté and Arthur Charpentier - December 2024

  • Paper (EN) - "Insurance analytics: prediction, explainability and fairness" - Arthur Charpentier wrote, with Kjersti Aas (Norwegian Computing Center & Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Fei Huang (University of New South Wales) and Ronald Richman (Old Mutual Insure and University of the Witwatersrand) the editorial of the new volume of Annals of Actuarial Science - December 2024
     
  • Paper (EN) - "Post-Calibration Techniques: Balancing Calibration and Score Distribution Alignment" -  Agathe Fernandes Machada presented recent work at a workshop at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (also known as NeurIPS 2024) - Poster - December 2024

  • Presentation (EN) - "Balance and Calibration of Probabilistic Scores From GLM to Machine Learning", 60th Actuarial Research Conference, Toronto (Canada) - July 29 - August 1, 2025

  • Presentation (EN) - "Fairness and Discrimination of Predictive Models A Spectrum of Fair Premiums, an Introduction", 60th Actuarial Research Conference, Toronto (Canada) - July 29 - August 1, 2025

  • Presentation (EN) - "Discrimination and Interpretability of Predictive Models" ("Discrimination et interprétabilité des modèles prédictifs") for the Institut Luxembourgeois des Actuaires - May 2025

  • Presentation (EN) - "Using optimal transport to mitigate unfair predictions and quantify counterfactual fairness" Academic Seminar, University of Toronto - March 2025 | Presentation (EN) - Université de Lausanne - May 2025 | Presentation (EN) - Mathematics Colloquium at Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas (CIMAT) - February 2025

  • Presentation (FR) - "IA, biais et équité (en actuariat et en assurance)", Association des Masters en Actuariat - February 2025. Read more (LinkedIn) 

  • Annual Conference of the Canadian Econometrics Study Group (EN) - Abstract - "Calibration of Probabilistic Scores of Classifiers" - December 2024 - Conference based on the two following papers:
              • Paper #1 - "From Uncertainty  to Precision: Enhancing Binary Classifier Performance through Calibration" - February 2024
              • Paper #2 - "Probabilistic Scores of Classifiers, Calibration is not Enough" - August 2024

  • Presentation (EN) - "Demystify fairness and discrimination in insurance, and avoid some pitfalls" - Arthur Charpentier was invited to give a talk at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) - Seminar, London, UK - November 2024

  • Presentation (EN) - "Optimal transport and fairness of predictive models" - Keynote Presentation - SCAI Workshop (Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence) - September 2024

  • Colloque au Centre Culturel International de Cerisy (FR) - Abstract - "Certitudes collective et incertitudes individuelles, les données massives changent-elles la donne ?" - Cerisy-la-Salle, France - September 2024

  • ACP Conference (EN) - "From contemplative to predictive modeling in actuarial science and risk management" - KU Leuven - July 2024
  • Annual Research Report (EN) - SCOR-UQAM Fairness and Insurance Project, Report #1 - Project Research Results - Authors: Arthur Charpentier (Principal Investigator), Professeur UQAM - 2024
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