Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 35 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Condition on the claim count. The empty random sum of independent claims is zero, and independence gives . Therefore the random-sum transform identity iswherever the composition is finite. This follows directly from the law of total expectation, rather than replacing the random count by its mean.
Put . For the specified negative binomial distribution, the negative binomial series gives . A rate- exponential distribution has moment-generating function . HenceThe last expression is exactly the moment-generating function of a compound binomial distribution with independent count and severitiesThe moment-generating function exists in a neighborhood of zero, so its uniqueness identifies the distributions. In particular, the new claim sizes have mean , not , and both aggregate distributions have an atom at zero. This is the negative-binomial sum of exponential claims representation with the severity rate explicitly retained.
Conditional on , the aggregate has Erlang distribution with density on . Repeated integration by parts of its tail givesIndeed, after substituting , the integral reduces recursively to the corresponding integral with exponent , terminating at . Applying the law of total probability yields the original infinite mixture distribution tailApplying the same argument to the compound binomial distribution gives instead the finite Erlang-mixture tail for a negative-binomial exponential aggregate:The two tails are equal. The binomial representation replaces an infinite sum by a finite exact calculation, eliminating the need to choose a claim-count truncation and control its omitted tail. The inner sums can be evaluated recursively, using for their exponential-weighted terms.