Government Actuary's Department - Stochastic Economic Scenarios

Description

A key part of our advice relates to, or relies on, the potential outturns for key economic variables - in particular in relation to asset returns, inflation and future interest rates. To support our advice in this area, GAD are looking to tender for a contract for the provision of a set of stochastic economic scenarios ("scenarios", "scenario set" or "economic scenario file"). 

The economic scenario file should contain stochastic forecasts of economic scenarios covering inflation, interest rates, credit, derivatives, FX and a range of asset classes. The scenarios are used in several areas of our advice, particularly for asset liability model runs for pension schemes, and are used to examine and illustrate the potential range of possible future outcomes. 

We require that a set of scenarios be provided to us regularly, at least quarterly, over the period of the contract. We also required that the scenarios:
i)	are based on sound economic principles and methods; 
ii)	are calibrated to reflect the market and economic conditions at the effective date of the calibration to ensure consistency with the date at which they are used; and
iii)	are calibrated to reflect either the provider's own view or GAD's own house-view on the long-term outcome for key economic variables in the scenario set.

GAD does not currently have a current provider of this service, though we have previously purchased one-off calibrations to support particular projects. 

In addition to the standard scenario files based on these principles, it is standard actuarial practice to consider other plausible assumptions and demonstrate the sensitivity of our advice to other assumptions. To inform this, we also require the ability to generate additional scenarios based on alternative views and calibration parameters and/or carry out stress testing on the scenario set. 
GAD recognises that it may also be possible to procure access to an "economic scenario model" to provide the capability for GAD to produce the scenarios files described above ourselves. Due to current levels of capacity and capability, our preference is for the scenario sets to be provided to us based on calibration targets, adjustments and stresses that are discussed and agreed with the supplier. It is therefore essential that tenderers have the capability to deliver scenarios to us directly. However, depending on the level of capacity and capability required to maintain and run such models ourselves, GAD are interested to explore this as an additional service and tenderers are invited to disclose such service provision in their response. 

Tenders for must be submitted via email to [email protected].  Failure to do so may result in the tender response not being processed or the response being automatically disqualified during the evaluation stage of the tender process.