ETC3420: Applied Insurance Methods

- 20%: Every Monday at 8am starting from week 2 to week 12 a quiz was available on Moodle. This quiz consisted of anywhere between 2-4 questions, which could be multiple choice or short answer, with no time limit and normally only 1 attempt allowed. These only covered the basics of each topics, and rarely strayed into difficult areas. Due to this, by researching answers and collaborating with others, it was relatively okay to get close to 20/20 for this section.

Firstly, this is probably one of the 2 trickiest actuarial units, along with ETC3530. So if you do not fully get what's going on with the content at first, then don't worry as many others are probably in the same boat as you. However, if you put in a lot of effort, mainly prioritising understanding this and any other 3rd year actuarial units, then you should be okay, as long as you use the additional readings to help reinforce your knowledge.

The best way to study for this subject would be:

1. Read the CS2/CM2/CT6 notes of each topic before attending the lecture.
2. Attend the lecture and see what parts of the CS2/CM2/CT6 notes are relevant to the course, and add on any additional material covered in the lectures to that knowledge bank
3. Have a go at the tutorial questions
4. Go to the tutorials to have it reinforced. This semester only 2 tutors took the subject, that being Jin and Jonathan who were both teaching it for the first time. I attended 1 of Jin's tutorials and for the rest I went to Jonathan's. Jin only read off the tutorial solutions on the screen and was difficult to ask for clarification in tutorials, as he would usually minimise deriving anything on the whiteboard rather relying on the solutions. Jonathan on the other hand was great even if it was a little difficult at first to understand him. He never relied on the tutorial solutions and instead wrote out each question from scratch on the whiteboard. If he is taking this unit again next year, I would strongly recommend attending his tutes, as only he understands the right way to teach the content.

- The exam was not as bad I was expecting to be honest. There were 6 questions, covering the main topics taught. 1 was on Poisson Processes, 1 was on Run-off Triangles, 1 was on Ruin Theory, 1 was on Collective Risk Model, 1 was on Extreme Value Theory & 1 was on Copulas. In particular, the Copula and EVT questions were tricky as they had not been taught properly and with no revision material provided to cover the topics, we had no idea what to expect for the exam.
Overall, this unit had solid foundations in the past, but this blew up quite significantly this semester. In the future, a project should be designed with far more relevant instructions, rather than leaving students in the dark on what is expected from them. Additionally, new topics must have material revised, otherwise this unit should not be done by anyone other than actuarial students.

- 20%. If there was one part of this unit that was particularly flawed, it would have to be the project. Although groups could be chosen by yourself, what actually had to be completed for the assignment was a mystery for everyone. The goal of the assignment was to analyse a randomly generated portfolio of claim holders and price reasonable premiums for each policyholder. This was then supposed to be written as an executive summary in a report style format. However, no indication was specified that it

Dan Zhu - Took all 12 lectures. In the past, I have not been a strong fan of Dan, just because she struggles to explain concepts in a plausible way in lectures that makes sense for any student to understand. However, this semester is her 4th year of taking this subject at Monash, and she has improved lecture delivery quite significantly. This has meant that I was able to comprehend most topics effectively, with the exception of Copulas and Extreme Value Theory (EVT) as these were taught for the first time this semester.

Yes, 2016 exam was provided without solutions

1 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

Dan (the lecturer and CE) recommends a bunch of books, but they aren't excessively relevant. However what is relevant are CT6, CM2 (2 topics only) and CS2 notes of the Actuarial Education Company (ActEd). These are way more detailed and formatted correctly compared to the lecture slides. So, they will provide far more intuition on the topics covered rather than relying on just the lecture slides. The CT6 notes are freely available online, but since the actuarial program changed to a new model this year, the CS2 and CM2 notes are harder to obtain, but if you ask around you may be able to obtain them.

1x 2hr lecture per week
1x 1.5hr tutorial week

Semester 2, 2019

NA