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Zixiao Quan

Publications and source records attributed to Zixiao Quan.

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Fairness-Aware Insurance Pricing: A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach

Machine learning improves predictive accuracy in insurance pricing but exacerbates trade-offs between competing fairness criteria across different discrimination measures, challenging regulators and insurers to reconcile profitability with equitable outcomes. While existing fairness-aware models offer partial solutions under GLM and XGBoost estimation methods, they remain constrained by single-objective optimization, failing to holistically navigate a conflicting landscape of accuracy, group fairness, individual fairness, and counterfactual fairness. To address this, we propose a novel multi-objective optimization framework that jointly optimizes all four criteria via the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II), generating a diverse Pareto front of trade-off solutions. We use a specific selection mechanism to extract a premium on this front. Our results show that XGBoost outperforms GLM in accuracy but amplifies fairness disparities; the Orthogonal model excels in group fairness, while Synthetic Control leads in individual and counterfactual fairness. Our method consistently achieves a balanced compromise, outperforming single-model approaches.

q-fin.RM

Monopoly Pricing of Weather Index Insurance

This study models the monopoly pricing of weather index insurance as a Bowley-type sequential game involving a profit-maximizing insurer (leader) and a farmer (follower). The farmer chooses an insurance payoff to minimize a convex distortion risk measure, while the insurer anticipates this best response and selects a premium principle and its parameters to maximize profit net of administrative costs. For the insurer, we adopt three different premium-principle parameterizations: (i) an expected premium with a single risk-loading factor, (ii) a two-parameter distortion premium based on a power transform, and (iii) a fully flexible pricing kernel drawn from the general Choquet integral representation with nondecreasing distortions. For the farmer, we model index payoffs using neural networks and compare solutions under fully connected architectures with those under convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We solve the game using a penalized bilevel programming algorithm that employs a function-value-gap penalty and delivers convergence guarantees without requiring the lower-level objective to be strongly convex. Based on Iowa's soybean yields and high-dimensional PRISM weather data, we find that CNN-based designs yield smoother, less noisy payoffs that reduce basis risk and push insurer profits closer to indemnity insurance levels. Moreover, expanding pricing flexibility from a single loading to a two-parameter distortion premium, and ultimately to a flexible pricing kernel, systematically increases equilibrium profits.

q-fin.RM