The paper is based on a Report produced by a working party of the General Insurance Study Group for the General Insurance Seminar held at Bristol in November, 1983. The terms of reference of the working party were:

(i) To review and summarize the published papers on the valuation of outstanding claims.

(ii) To classify the methods described, and comment on the assumptions implied by each method.

(iii) To discuss the problem of estimating the degree of uncertainty associated with the valuation of outstanding claims, disregarding the uncertainty resulting from the effects of inflation and (insofar as this may be taken into account in the valuation) investment income.

The first part of the paper is concerned with terms of reference (i) and (ii), explaining how the paper could be used as part of the loss reserving process and describing the format and presentation of the summaries which are shown in three Appendices.