ACTL3162: General Insurance Techniques

20% Assignment + 20% Mid-sem + 60% Final exam

Prerequisite: ACTL2102 and MATH2901 if you are in math stream

This course is described as the most practical course amongst all level 3 ACTL courses. As the course title suggests, it will go through many general insurance techniques including application of generalised linear models, bayesian models and surplus process in the field of insurance. It will also go through run-off triangles, reserve calculation and some game theory at the end.

Comparing to ACTL3182, this course covers much broader material but less in depth. The notations used in this course is not so pleasant and elegant if you came from a mathematical background, especially if you have recent done Bayesian inference. As per usual for ACTL courses, lots of memorisation is needed, because even if the algorithms covered in the lecture are in the orange book, it will look completely different, which makes you wonder why are even they doing this.

Since this is probably my second last ACTL course that I will do, I will give you guys some thought about the program from ACTL/MATH point of view. At the start of the degree, I was actually surprised to see there are quite a few ACTL/MATH students. The common trait is that we generally can handle the mathematical component pretty well, but stumble in essays and reports (coz they generally need a lot of bs haha). And the majority of us become less interested in ACTL around 2nd to 3rd year, and later on only doing it for the sake of completing the degree.

It maybe rumoured a rewarding degree, but it is much drier than what we initially expect. At first I would describe ACTL as the study of quantifying contingent events with financial / insurance applications, now I would just say it is the applications of contingent methods in the field of insurance. The field is getting narrower and narrower as you move up to higher years, which is not something that I enjoy. Lots of people are not doing their part II's, and I know many gods who excelled at the courses (Avg 90+ WAM) just switched to tradings and computer science (e.g. Master Rui) and other fields. Therefore when people talk about the high drop out rate in ACTL, it is actually not because the degree is how crazily hard, it is mainly because it is much less interesting that what we initially expected, and most people would move on to the field that they do enjoy. As such, I really admired those who continued on with the degree and they deserve the high payroll at the end. However, the first year ACTL content can generally be transferred to most business and science degrees, so there really is not that many harm doing ACTL for one year, get a taste of what it feel like, meet interesting people and then decide from second year onwards.

Finally, I will give some advice for future students that are planning to do the same degree.
- First, if you are planning to go on exchange, do it in your second year. Otherwise it is really hard to course match in your third year and onwards.
- Second, DON'T DO MGMT1001 in the first year, you can do it in exchange so that it won't affect your WAM that much.
- Third, join societies, meet motivated friends, go to peer mentoring programs etc, they have A LOT of resources that can help you through your future courses, also you can get an overview of the degree by talking to them.
- Fourth, carefully read through the orange book, it has a lot more information than you would expect. And, DONT FORGET to bring it with you to exams.- Fifth, honestly, enjoy your time at uni. As many studies have shown, what universities bring the most is not knowledge, not skills, not ideas, but connections. And you will be surprised how far these connections can take you after university.

3 hrs. Lecture + 1 hrs. Tutorial

3.5/5

Yes

AProf. Eric Cheung

N/A

3/5

N/A

2018/2

HD