ACTL2111: Financial Mathematics for Actuaries

15% Mid-semester exam, 15% Assignment (Broken into 4 mini-submissions; 4 Excel submissions with the final submission including a report). Final exam weighted 70%

The prerequisites specified are ACTL1101 and MATH1251. Alternatively, students undertaking Adv Maths majoring in Quantitative Risk are only required MATH1251. Whilst concepts are reintroduced, you should know what's going on in the finance side of ACTL1101, else this course becomes ridiculously hard even at the start.

This course is compulsory for any student undertaking actuarial studies to meet their Part I exemptions. This course contributes to CT1.

This course draws upon certain and contingent cash flows demonstrated in ACTL1101 as well as a few elementary concepts in probability. The first half of the course is mostly revision of material in ACTL1101, however more complex cash flows are also observed (e.g. the increasing annuity).

Proper treatment is given to various other concepts such as bonds. Unfortunately, I feel as though many concepts such as forwards, options and swaps were not explained very well. This lead to quite a disaster on my part in that I had attained substantially high marks prior to the exam, but the inability to do a whole module (there are 6 modules) lead to a mark I never wanted to see at uni.

Many concepts in Excel are very introductory, however powerful tools such as VLOOKUP are certainly studied. Much of the assignment is based off Excel as well. Note that the finals did not examine Excel,

This course helps make concepts in ACTL1101 appear more clearer, however it is of my opinion that without FINS2624 (Portfolio Management, compulsory to all finance majors in commerce degrees) this course can be substantially difficult than what was perhaps intended. Note that not everything in the course was hard; only certain aspects of it.

2 hour lecture, 1 hour Excel laboratory, 1 hour tutorial

3.5/5

Yes

Dr Jonathan Ziveyi

On Moodle, ample tutorial exercises and past papers are posted up. Short video recordings of Assoc. Prof. Benjamin Avanzi explaining the concepts are also available for you to view.

2/5

Broverman, S.A. (2015), Mathematics of Investment and Credit, 6th Edition (5th Edition also permissible). Not compulsory, but from what I was told it contains some nice summaries and questions. A separate solutions manual to the questions can be purchased.
Sherris, M. (1996), Money and Capital Markets, Pricing, Yields and Analysis, 2nd Edition, Allen & Unwin. Never heard of anything about this one.

2017/1

71 CR