ETC3530: Contingencies in Insurance and Pensions

- The individual assignment was designed to get you up to scratch with using R, a programming language used in this subject. It mainly involved working with some data in R to create functions that can calculate values of actuarial products, before plotting those on a graph and comparing their shape. This was an excellent assignment, and not too labour intensive. Most students did quite well, so it was not extremely difficult.

- each week from weeks 2-11 a quiz was done in tutorials. As long as you attempt the quiz, you get 1% regardless of your mark, so it is an easy 10%. I found the quizzes to be quite basic however, so it should be reasonably simple to obtain the full 10% even without only attempting it once.

- Now this was an assignment. Using R Shiny, each student had to create in groups from sizes 3-4 a Shiny dashboard that outputted the values of actuarial reserves. In order to get full marks, you needed to write code from scratch in R and stress test it to ensure that it was perfect. This was extremely labour intensive. In order to do well, you needed to put in a ton of effort so that you could maximise your marks. I found myself working on this very heavily throughout semester, so I am glad that I had the time available to work on it. Most groups did do reasonably well, but try and

- The exam covered all topics, but was heavily geared towards week 9 onwards (as that made up around half the exam). It consisted of 4 short answer questions, which you did online and handwrote before uploading your answers to your computer using either a QR code scanner or emailing your answers through to the exam team due to COVID-19. I found the exam to be very long, as was pressed for time throughout. However, the questions were not excessively difficult, just very long-winded, so if you are taking the exam next year onwards, then be aware that the exam is quite long and you need to try and prepare as much as possible to do questions in the shortest amount of time you can take.

by David Dickson is recommended, but not necessary. What I would recommend though is the

Firstly, I'd have a look at Fraxyz review here to provide some context for the subject. Unfortunately Colin no longer teaches this subject, so it has been hard since then to find a replacement. But this year Hamza Hanbali took the subject for the first time, and what a change it was! Hamza sets difficult assessments, but what I like about them is that they are really practical and relatable to what you would encounter at work. The second assignment in particular, although being incredibly labour-intensive (my longest assignment ever tbh) was very very valuable, as it gave an insight into how to apply theoretical knowledge into practice.

Topics covered included life assurance contracts, life annuity contracts, evaluation of those, premiums, reserves, joint lives and contingent benefits, mortality profit, competing risks, unit linked and accumulating with profit contracts, profit testing and reserving aspects of profit testing. All of which are in CM1 from chapters 14-27 (14 is needed as an intro to the subject). Therefore, it’s really imperative that you have access to CM1 in some form, as it reinforces what you’ve taught, which can be quite intensive.

- Took lectures from weeks 1-2 as well as providing revision material to get you up to date with the subject. Dan covered a lot of mathematical proofs in her lectures that were not examinable, so can be quite dry and intensive watching her lectures. That being said, they were still useful in starting off the course.

- Took the lectures from weeks 3-9 as well as being chief examiner. What a legend! Hamza was recently hired by Monash as a permanent replacement to teach the core actuarial subjects in life insurance. He is amazing! His lectures always had a 'meme of the week' and had lots of timelines to explain actuarial products, which I preferred to long mathematical proofs as it was far more conceptual. I hope that in the future Hamza can lecture all lectures for this subject.

- Took the lectures from weeks 10-12. Maz was great in terms of his industry experience, as he currently works in the industry so can provide more background knowledge as to how profit is calculated and how contracts taught in his 3 lectures are used. That being said, his lectures were a little dry so try rewatch them if you can.

No exams available, though would have been handy if one was provided.

4.5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

- The tutorials were standard going through tutorial questions, plus having a break in the middle to go through quizzes. I had Julie and Farheena as my tutors, and they were both experts and knowledgable in what they taught. I appreciated that they went through each question from scratch - so students could comprehend what was going on in front of them. That being said, the tutes were quite rushed due to time constraints - as because of COVID all 4 tutorials were run back-to-back, so they were only 1 hr duration such that tutors could fit them all in and have a break in between. This was annoying, as more time would've been welcome to go through more questions to understand the concepts. Despite that, they were still near the top level of all my tutorials taken at university, so I really appreciated having the time to understand the concepts being taught, no matter how short they were.
Overall though,

1 x 2hr lecture per week (via Zoom)

1 x 1.5 hr tutorial per week (reduced to 1 hr this semester due to teaching constraints, should be increased to 1.5 hrs from next year)

Semester 2, 2020

2x10% Quiz
20% Group Project
60% Exam

This subject was deviously hard. At first, its just rehashing annuity formulas learnt in BFC2340 with a little probability twist, but there's tonnes of different notations and little manipulations going on with everything.
The first quiz was very basic, but the second required you to really understand what's happening as the material is presented in ways you've never seen before. Making sure you know how everything is derived, and what the links between different annuities are, not just being able to recite the formula. (The unit guide says there's no quizzes and an 80% exam, but when I did it this meant 20% quizzes, 60% exam, may have changed.)
Like Colin's second year subject, ETC2430, there's a group assignment that requires a huge amount of work to complete.
Really make sure you're on top of Debt Markets before you go in, it's the real pre-req, not just ETC2430.

Colin O'Hare

Yes

3 out of 5

Yes

Actuarial Mathematics for Life Contingent Risks - Not needed at all
Tables and Formula for Actuarial Exams - Extremely useful, formula book brought into most actuarial exams

2hr Lectures
2hr Tutorial

2014 S2

HD