Robust heavy-tailed versions of generalized linear models with applications in actuarial science

Abstract: Generalized linear models (GLMs) form one of the most popular classes of models in statistics. The gamma variant is used, for instance, in actuarial science for the modelling of claim amounts in insurance. A flaw of GLMs is that they are not robust against outliers (i.e., against erroneous or extreme data points). A difference in trends in the bulk of the data and the outliers thus yields skewed inference and predictions. To address this problem, robust methods have been introduced. The most commonly applied robust method is frequentist and consists in an estimator which is derived from a modification of the derivative of the log-likelihood. We propose an alternative approach which is modelling-based and thus fundamentally different. It allows for an understanding and interpretation of the modelling, and it can be applied for both frequentist and Bayesian statistical analyses. The approach possesses appealing theoretical and empirical properties.