The purpose of this paper is to provide P&C practitioners with an enhanced understanding of bias and fairness, the considerations that go along with these topics, and tools for detecting, evaluating and mitigating potential bias in actuarial risk assessment models. Its scope is to provide guidance for practitioners performing actuarial work related to underwriting property and casualty (P&C) risks, including but not limited to pricing and modelling. Substantial familiarity with P&C modelling and ratemaking approaches is assumed of the reader throughout the paper, and the intended audience is P&C pricing actuaries. However, the content of the paper is also applicable to other areas of actuarial practice.
Historical issues and examples relating to bias and fairness, such as racially biased correctional services risk assessments, contextualize the issues at hand.