Vincent MOK

BSc in Risk Management Science
Reinsurance Group of America

I was honoured to have the opportunity to work for the Reinsurance Group of America as an actuarial intern in the product development team. This reinsurance company provides new business solutions to clients. During my internship, I assisted my team with new business development initiatives, which provided me with valuable experience.

First, my major task as an intern was to provide actuarial support for product development initiatives. I calculated the incidence rate of the new benefit that we proposed and produced the distribution for the insured across different issue ages. Then, I used the incidence rate to determine the net amount at risk and maximum limit of the quotation and to draft the pricing document for the quotation team. I also was able to develop a prototype for a new insurance product targeted at young professionals, which was the biggest challenge that I faced during my internship. I had to determine the needs of young professionals and suggest a solution for them. It took me almost a month to set up the product features and pricing direction for the team. In addition, I conducted research on modelling new business ideas and helped the local pricing team to validate assumptions regarding critical illness. Last, but not least, our team members gave me a lot of support throughout my internship, and I was pleased to work with them.

The RMSC programme has equipped me with solid knowledge of statistics, actuarial science, and finance, which played an important role in my ability to gain this internship opportunity as survival functions, probability theory, and the time value of money are frequently used in pricing. Therefore, I am grateful to be a student at RMSC, which provided me with strong support during my internship journey.

Chung Tin KOO

BSc in Risk Management Science
McGill University, Canada

It has been a wonderful experience for me to participate in the exchange programme at McGill University. I have participated in plenty of exchange activities. During the first week of arrival, McGill University provided some orientation activities for exchange students. The most valuable one was an orientation brunch. It was an event that offers a free meal and enabled exchange students to meet each other.

There were some courses that I think it is worth taking at McGill University. I took a mathematical finance course during my studies. It was a course that reviewed basic concepts of derivative pricing, and then get into the introduction of measure and probability theory, and also some more advanced discrete and continuous time mathematical models with applications in option pricing. In other words, it was like an elementary version of the stochastic calculus course offered by the CUHK RMSC programme. I was able to grab some basic stuff on this topic so that it will benefit my studies in the future. I found that the lessons in McGill and CUHK are quite different. The professor did not upload any lecture notes on the platform. Instead, he just wrote the notes on the blackboard to let students copy them. This can greatly encourage students to attend lessons. It would be hard to catch up if someone try to skip lessons.

In addition, the exchange programme benefits much on my personal growth. I have tried a lot of new stuff. For staying abroad, cooking dishes oneself is common. It means that was a chance for me to learn cooking. At first, I started up with some basic dishes like a simple spaghetti mixing with prepared pasta sauce. When I get used to it, I found cooking was fun and relaxing. Then I tried to cook some more advanced cuisines like lasagna and rib-eye steak. It was nice to build up a new hobby during this period. And I have traveled to many places to explore around the world. Opportunities were given to me to obtain some once in a lifetime experiences, like watching an NBA playoff semi-final in Toronto.

Moreover, the exchange programme provided me new inspirations towards my life and future goals. It was a precious opportunity for me to study abroad for one semester, to try something new or cannot happen in Hong Kong. I truly believe that one should treasure the opportunity when they are given a chance to do something different.