A Markov Chain Model for Contagion

We introduce a bivariate Markov chain counting process with contagion for modelling the clustering arrival of loss claims with delayed settlement for an insurance company. It is a general continuous-time model framework that also has the potential to be applicable to modelling the clustering arrival of events, such as jumps, bankruptcies, crises and catastrophes in finance, insurance and economics with both internal contagion risk and external common risk. Key distributional properties, such as the moments and probability generating functions, for this process are derived. Some special cases with explicit results and numerical examples and the motivation for further actuarial applications are also discussed. The model can be considered a generalisation of the dynamic contagion process introduced by Dassios and Zhao (2011).