For an aggregate claims model, let denote one claim size, with expected value and variance . The total is zero when the claim count is zero. Given , independence gives
The law of total expectation and law of total variance, together with for a Poisson distribution, imply
The raw second moment appears because the random count itself contributes to the variance.
Conditional on , the moment-generating function of the sum is . Averaging with the Poisson distribution therefore gives the compound Poisson distribution transform
This is valid wherever is finite. Finite first and second moments alone do not ensure positive exponential moments; for positive claims the corresponding Laplace transform always exists.
For the independent portfolios put and . Their Poisson distribution counts add to a Poisson distribution with parameter . By Poisson-multinomial conditioning, conditional on the total count the first risk count has a binomial distribution with parameters , and the second is the remaining count. Thus one can generate the same total loss by drawing independent risk labels with these weights, then drawing each claim from its label's law. The merged severity has mixture distribution
It follows that has a compound Poisson distribution with count parameter and this severity law. This is the fixed-year version of Poisson superposition of insurance portfolios. Its expected value and variance are
Alternatively, multiplying the two independent aggregate Laplace transforms yields wherever finite, confirming the same compound Poisson distribution.
For the retained compound Poisson aggregate under per-claim reinsurance, replace each claim by its retained payment . Assume the retention is measurable, with as usual. The count parameter remains , and the severity law is the pushforward measure of the mixture severity under . Thus the retained compound Poisson aggregate has a compound Poisson distribution with that transformed severity and
Its moment-generating function is on its finite domain. For a general retention , zero retained payments can occur and are allowed as compound-Poisson marks; they may equivalently be removed by Poisson thinning. The two specified contracts retain strictly positive payments for strictly positive claims.
Write and . Under the model in part (a),
and is independent of the price category . The Poisson-multinomial conditioning identity gives
More explicitly, the likelihood function for row factors as
The first factor is the likelihood of the row total and the second is the conditional multinomial likelihood. The free price effect makes the first factor maximal at , while maximizing the remaining factors gives
Consequently both fits have the same maximum-likelihood fitted value
Here every row total is , the column totals are , and , so every fitted row is
This factorization is the Poisson trick.
Let
and condition on . The corresponding model for each treatment group is
For fit1, the additive Poisson means imply
so the outcome probabilities are common to all three treatments. For fit2,
so each treatment may have its own outcome probabilities.
The Poisson trick is Poisson-multinomial conditioning: independent Poisson cell counts, conditional on their total, are multinomial with probabilities proportional to their means. With free treatment main effects, profiling the Poisson likelihood over the group totals gives the multinomial likelihood up to a parameter-independent factor. The Poisson regressions therefore fit these multinomial models and give the same likelihood-ratio comparisons for the outcome parameters.