ReValuator - An Expert System Approach to Actuarial Valuations

Expert system technology has now matured so that task-oriented business programs can be rapidly prototyped, developed, coded, and deployed on desktop and laptop personal computers. This rapid development and deployment is especially true when the task is well defined, and the target user has little knowledge in the specified domain. This chapter sketches the successful implementation of an actuarial program designed to assist a nonactuary in detailed actuarial analysis. During the past few years, sophisticated microprocessors have been placed in desktop and laptop computers. As a result, these computer platforms can now accommodate expert systems that once ran only on specialized computers or mainframes. The expertise captured in the knowledge-based system can be distributed on these relatively inexpensive computer platforms to locations where no expert is available for consultation. This chapter describes the development of an expert system called the ReValuator and includes the following sections: