Using optimal transport to quantify and mitigate unfair insurance predictions
Seminar in Insurance and Economics
SPEAKER: Arthur Charpentier (Université du Québec à Montréal).
TITLE: Using optimal transport to quantify and mitigate unfair insurance predictions.
ABSTRACT: The insurance industry is heavily reliant on predictions of risks based on characteristics of potential customers. Although the use of said models is common, researchers have long pointed out that such practices perpetuate discrimination based on sensitive features such as gender or race. Given that such discrimination can often be attributed to historical data biases, an elimination or at least mitigation is desirable. With the shift from more traditional models to machine-learning based predictions, calls for greater mitigation have grown anew, as simply excluding sensitive variables in the pricing process can be shown to be ineffective. In this talk, we first investigate why predictions are a necessity within the industry and why correcting biases is not as straightforward as simply identifying a sensitive variable. We then propose to ease the biases through the use of Wasserstein barycenters instead of simple scaling. To demonstrate the effects and effectiveness of the approach we employ it on real data and discuss its implications. (The talk will be based on a recent textbook as well as work with F. Hu and P. Ratz: 2310.20508, 2309.06627, 2306.12912 and 2306.10155.)