Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 45 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The surplus in the classical risk model is . With ruin defined as a strictly negative surplus, its ultimate ruin probability isLet . The first arrival time has exponential distribution of rate , independent of the first claim. Before that claim no ruin occurs, because the premium rate is positive. Given its arrival at and size , available capital just before it is . If ruin is immediate; otherwise the independent increments and fresh claim sizes make subsequent ruin probability . Thus first-claim conditioning givesThis is the ruin counterpart of the first-claim decomposition for survival probability. DefineThe convolution term is continuous: extend the bounded function by zero to negative arguments and use continuity of translations in for the integrable density . The tail function is also continuous. Changing variables to yieldsDifferentiating this exponentially weighted integral establishes differentiability rather than presuming it. The fundamental theorem of calculus givesReversing the integration variable in the convolution therefore proves the ruin integro-differential equation:At zero the derivative is the right derivative; the same representation supplies it.
For the exponential claim law, introduceDifferentiating the explicit convolution gives . Henceusing the proved integral equation. Differentiating that equation once more givesso the required ordinary differential equation isPositive relative safety loading means , so . The general solution is .
The condition at large capital must also be used. The strong law of large numbers for the Poisson process and the independent claims gives almost surely. Thus . Its path has only finitely many jumps on each bounded time interval, so its supremum over all time is finite almost surely. Therefore as , forcing . The supplied initial value then gives ultimate ruin with exponential claims:The decay rate is also the exponential-claim adjustment coefficient.
For the maximum aggregate loss in a classical risk model, the ruin event is exactly . Since , , and its full cumulative distribution function isIn particular it has an atom of mass at zero. Conditional on , its distribution is exponential with rate ; omitting that atom would give an incorrectly normalized law.