Biography
Louise Francis, FCAS, MAAA
Louise Francis is the Consulting Principal and founder of Francis
Analytics and Actuarial Data Mining, Inc. where she leads reserving, pricing, predictive
modeling, simulation, and related actuarial projects and engagements.
As an insurance professional, Ms. Francis has expertise in a variety of techniques for pricing and reserving insurance products, both on a traditional and leading edge basis. She also has experience in feasibility studies and in planning and evaluating programs for claims loss cost reduction. Ms. Francis pioneered the application of data mining technologies such as neural networks and text mining to insurance data to identify patterns useful for managing claims and making underwriting decisions.
Ms. Francis has over 35 years of experience in the actuarial profession. Prior to starting her own firm, she was Director and Associate Actuary for CIGNA Property and Casualty where she provided actuararial experience to the Claims Division and ESIS, CIGNA’s third party claims administrator. She was responsible for evaluating the overall performance of the Claims Division and measuring the effectiveness of specific Claims Division initiatives such as use of health care professionals in the management of claims. She was also involved in assisting underwriters with evaluating programs in the Special Risk Division, which provided insurance and insurance services to large companies.
Ms. Francis has introduced insurance professionals to advanced modeling methods, including simulation, predictive modeling and text mining, both as a speaker at conferences and as an author of papers and articles. Five of her papers were awarded the Data Quality/Data Technology prize by the CAS (Casualty Actuarial Society) and IDMA (Insurance Data Management Association). The papers covered specific modeling procedures such as neural networks and MARS (multivariate adaptive regression splines) as well as leading edge data gathering techniques such as text mining. They also illustrated a variety of insurance applications including fraud modeling, reserving and underwriting. She has also won two awards for papers and essays related to the financial crisis. Ms. Francis is a former VP Research for the CAS. She has previously been on the Joint Risk Management council and is chair of the JRMS research committee. Ms. Francis is also a subject matter expert for the CAS Institute’s new Certified Specialist in predictive modeling program. She has been involved in a number of other CAS initiatives, including estimating reserve variability, improving data quality, and reviewing papers for the CAS journal Variance. She authored a chapter in Predictive Modeling Applications in Actuarial Science, Vol 1 and has participated in presentations about the book. She is an instructor of the CAS Limited Attendance Seminar on Reserve Variability and has led numerous workshops and seminars. Ms. Francis was a 2014 winner of the CAS’s Matthew Rodderman award for her lifetime contributions as a volunteer.
Ms. Francis received her Bachelor of Arts degree from William Smith College and a Master of Science degree in Health Sciences from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries. She is also a member of the American Risk and Insurance Association and the American Statistical Association.
For a complete description of the company and listing of Ms.
Francis’ awards, papers and presentations, please see www.data-mines.com.
