Steve CHAN

BSc in Risk Management Science
UBS AG

It was my great honour to join the Industrial Placement Program (IPP) at UBS AG last year. During this one-year internship, I was involved in many different projects to automate and improve processes throughout the trade lifecycle. I played different roles in these projects, including that of a business analyst, a developer and even a project manager overseeing the progress of the projects. Majoring in RMSC helped me greatly in this internship, especially in terms of hard skills and financial knowledge.

In terms of hard skills, the advanced courses enabled me to develop my programming muscles. Because coding is required for derivatives pricing and simulation in some courses, the training in Excel VBA and R enabled me to perform my tasks in the internship. The machine learning and data analysis courses also helped me acquire both the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to process large amounts of data.

In terms of financial knowledge, RMSC courses provided me with a deep understanding of various kinds of financial products and exotic derivatives, rather than merely descriptive financial knowledge. For instance, CBBC (Callable Bull/Bear Contract), Variance Swap and other ‘real-world’ products were covered in these courses. Although stochastic calculus and the pricing of exotic derivatives might not have been much use in my internship work, studying these topics helped me to understand the nature and the background operations of these structured products. Surprisingly, these lessons facilitated my adaptability at the bank and smoothed the process of developing automation and process improvements.

In addition to this technical work, my internship provided opportunities to chair meetings and to present in front of a large audience. I had confidence in my presentation skills due to the reading courses in the RMSC curriculum. The experience of presenting selected topics or news in the financial industry has helped me prepare to go through technical material with an audience. I believe that this kind of soft skill is of utmost importance in my work because my responsibility goes beyond coding and delivery. I need to ask questions and explain my logic to different stakeholders, and any misunderstandings could lead to work having to be redone or, in the worst case, SFC fines. Therefore, good communication skills can help me to manage stakeholders’ expectations and, of course, reduce the risk in what I deliver.

Overall, this one-year internship gave me a glimpse of real-world practices and an opportunity to transfer what I have learnt in the RMSC courses to the workplace. Again, I am most grateful to UBS AG and the Department of Statistics for this opportunity and for their support.

Adrian WONG

BSc in Risk Management Science
University of Sussex, United Kingdom

In term one of the academic year 2017/2018, I had a fruitful experience studying at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. I studied three mathematics courses and one extra course related to film studies. I learned the difference between education at the host university and at CUHK. In addition, I made friends from the UK, US, Greece, Czech Republic, Japan and China who I learned a lot from.

Two out of the three mathematics courses I took were year four equivalent courses, and the remaining one was a graduate level course. I could see the cohesion among the courses the host university had tried to make. Many concepts or solutions were based on the knowledge obtained from previous courses. The teaching staff knew clearly what level of knowledge their students had. They did not spend much time reviewing the prerequisite knowledge. Instead, they skipped the explanations and taught the more difficult material. They explained things only when a student had a question, and if the explanation would take too much time, it would be explained after class. The students there were less conservative than the students at CUHK, where asking questions during the lesson is normal. In addition, the homework assignments were, surprisingly, marked by the teaching staff. They clearly understood the common mistakes of the class and each person’s progress. They also wrote comments on the assignments, pointing out the incorrect steps and concepts in the solutions.

I took the film studies course out of curiosity because this type of course is not provided at CUHK. I learned how to analyse a film from different aspects: mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography and music. The seminars in this course really provoked discussions of the film assigned each week.

I met people of different origins. Although they came from diverse backgrounds, they were generally very nice. Some were even interested in Chinese culture and cuisine. At the same time, I learned about their cultures. Unfortunately, even in a town as diversified as Sussex, racism still existed. There was a South Korean student at the host university who was beaten with glass bottles by a gang of local teenagers when he was walking back home, and he was sent to the hospital. Therefore, I would recommend that exchange students in the future be more cautious when walking alone on the streets at night.