It is often desirable to evaluate actual, ex post, performance of different business units. Traditional
measures of financial performance for insurers, such as historical loss ratios, can provide misleading
indications of relative results for two business units with different levels of risk. For instance, if a
business unit with a high degree of risk were to have a lower loss ratio than a business unit with a low
amount of risk, the loss ratios alone may not properly identify which of the two business units
performed “better”. The use of a risk-adjusted performance metric such as RAROC may allow these
Revised: October 2010 38
business units to be more fairly compared. The explicit risk-adjustment may also be an improvement
over judgmental premium to surplus ratios.
As an example of this process, consider the Sample Insurance Company presented in Section 4.
Rather than rely upon the expected loss ratios, hypothetical values for the actual loss ratios realized
over the year will be used. For this example, the actual loss ratios will be assumed to equal 92% for
Line A and 86% for Line B.
Based solely on the loss ratios, it is natural to assume that Line B performed better. Calculation of an
“economic profit” could also be used to show that Line B had a larger present value profit. For
example, assuming that the actual market returns were 5%, then each line of business would have had
economic profit at the end of the year equal to the following