Actuarial Science News Details | Statistics and Actuarial Science

We now have an email just for undergrad ACTSC students to send questions to the actsc advisors

New Canada-China Actuarial Qualification Examination Centre at the University of Waterloo

On Monday Oct.18, there will be a special signing ceremony to establish the Canada-China Actuarial Qualification Examination Centre at the University of Waterloo. This Centre is the first of its kind outside of China. Details of the event are as follows:

Date: Monday, October 18, 2010
Time: 10:00 to 11:30 am
Location: Davis Centre 1302

University of Waterloo President Feridun Hamdullahpur, Sun Life Financial Asia Desk VP K.C. Chan and other distinguished guests will give short speeches to recognize this special occasion.

We are honoured to host Mr. Wei Yingning, Vice Chairman of China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC); Chairman of China Insurance Protection Fund Company Ltd. and President, China Association of Actuaries. Mr. Wei will give a presentation on an Overview of Chinese Insurance Industry and Actuarial Undertakings. It will be in Mandarin with English slides.

Winter course announcement:

Actsc 453/853 will be offered as an evening course in the Winter.

John Culver Wooddy Scholarship

One of our actuarial science students, Siaw Yun Poi, won a John Culver Wooddy scholarship awarded by the Actuarial Foundation. See all winners here.

Governor General Silver Medal

One of our actuarial science students, Zhe Zhu, is one of the three Governor General Silver Medal winners at UW. Zhe also won the 2010 Samuel Eckler Medal for highest standing in Actuarial Science.

A Short History of the Actuarial Science Program is now available.

Additional details.

The Ontario Conference of Casualties Actuaries (OCCA) has made the following scholarship decisions:

The OCCA College Community Relations committee has selected the following three students as the recipients of 2010 OCCA scholarship: Jue Hou from University of Waterloo, Karan Phadke from University of Toronto, and Xin Lei Fu from Western University. Each of them will receive a scholarship amount of $1,000. Congratulations! If anyone is interested in knowing more about the scholarship and/or the selection process, please feel free to contact Mariane Takahashi at Mariane. Takahashi@lombard.ca.

Siaw Yun Poi, one of our Honours Actuarial Science student, won the university Co-op Student of the Year Award by Education at Work Ontario.

A winning combination

Siaw Yun Poi, a Bachelor of Mathematics co-op student, won the university Co-op Student of the Year Award by Education at Work Ontario.

Some people have it all. But Siaw Yun Poi seems to do it all.

An amazingly high cumulative average? She’s got it. A bustling volunteer schedule with the Out of the Cold program and St. John’s Soup Kitchen, as well as spending her time as a first-year student mentor for the Actuarial Science Club? She has that too. (more details)

Department recognised as a Center of Actuarial Excellence

The Society of Actuaries' (SOA) Center of Actuarial Excellence Evaluation Committee has announced that the Department has been recognised by the SOA as a Center of Actuarial Excellence (CAE). The designation is awarded for a period of five years beginning December 15, 2009

Laurier course on P&C Insurance available to UW students

In the Winter 2010 term, the following course will be offered at WLU by Prof. Mary Kelly, on Monday evenings from 4 to 7pm. Any UW student who has done ACTSC 363 or is in his/her 4th year can automatically register for this course on Quest. Other students will need the instructor's permission (mkelly@wlu.ca). This course will count as a non-math elective.

*BU419: Property and Liability Insurance Management.*

This course examines the structure of insurance markets and the management of insurance companies with an emphasis on property and liability insurers. This course is aimed at students focussed on a career in the property/casualty insurance industry.

Topics covered include the structure of the property and liability industry in Canada: the distribution of insurance, firm ownership, personal and commercial insurance products, and the impact of the legal and regulatory framework on the operations of Canadian insurers. The key operational functions of an insurer are discussed with an emphasis on pricing and loss reserving procedures and public policy implications of risk classification. Students are exposed to the statutory annual statement of an insurer and the financial ratios used to evaluate an insurer's financial well-being.

For students writing CAS exams, this course provides an overview of material covered in exams 5, 6 and 7.

Lecture by Don Stewart, CEO of Sun Life Financial Inc.

Sept. 22, 2009, 5-6pm in HH1101.
Limited seating so you need to RSVP.
See details at http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/arts/alumni/events.html

July/09 – Winter 2010 ACTSC 455 offered in place of ACTSC 453

Some of you may have noticed that ACTSC 453 was not included in the Winter pre-enrollment list, this is because we were debating offering ACTSC 455 instead. As things now stand ACTSC 453 will not be offered in Winter 2010 and ACTSC 455, Advanced Life Insurance Practice will. Students will be able to enroll in the course during their normal Winter enrollment appointments.

July/09 – New Courses in Fall 2010/Winter 2011

ACTSC 363 will no longer be offered as of Fall 2009 and Winter 2010 will have ACTSC 462 offered for the last time as it currently is designed. For Fall 2010 and beyond these two courses will be combined and revamped into two new P&C courses, under the numbers ACTSC 462 and 463. The term offerings are still TBA so keep watching this news site for more information.

July/09 – Changes to ACTSC 445 and 446

Students will have noticed that there have been a few changes to ACTSC 445 and 446 as of Fall 2009. As the courses now stand, they have been split into two sections held at the same time, but with different types of students in the sections. The first Lecture is reserved for Honours ACTSC, STAT, Double Degree and PMATH majors, the second Lecture is for everyone else. We’ve done this so that students with different pre-requisites (STAT 334 vs STAT 330 and 333) will be grouped together, and examples can be adjusted based on the needs of the particular audience. The breakdown of the course material and tests will still be the same for both sections.

July/09 – SOA / CIA News

As of Fall 2009 the SOA Exam C will now be computer based. You can find more information about this exam at SOA Exams and Requirements.

July/09 – Actuarial Science Students

We currently have a total of 516 Actuarial Science students: 501 full-time and 15 part-time ones. Of these 317 of them are in coop and 199 are regular students.

This year’s Eckler award winner was Xiaoheng (Jerry) Wang and he had the highest Actuarial Science average of an Eckler award winner that we know of.

This year Terrence Chin and Rachel Min were selected as the Junior and Senior reps on the Future Actuaries Editorial Board.

July/09 – Retiring Faculty

At the end of the 2009/2010 school year Professor Rob Brown will be retiring from the University of Waterloo. If you’ve had Rob before make sure you stop by to congratulate him and wish him luck on his next adventure.

July/09 – Maternity Leave Replacement

Some of you will have read in the Spring Newsletter that your advisor Alice Pfeifer Hanov is currently expecting and will we leaving on maternity leave at the end of September 2009. She will be gone on mat leave from October 2009 to October 2010. In her absence Diana Chisholm and Professor David Landriault will be taking over her advising duties. Office hours for David will be decided in September and posted on his door as well as the board outside of Alice’s office.

July/09 – Override Reminders

A quick reminder to students that all course overrides must be signed by one of the department advisors. Instructors can NOT sign course overrides. For Statistics courses see Riley Metzger, and for Actuarial Science see Diana Chisholm and Alice Pfeifer Hanov (or David Landriault as of October 2009). The only time an instructor will need to sign off on an override is for a requisite override or to approve a time conflict. Under these circumstances the advisors still have to sign the override, and will not do so until you have been given permission from the instructor to override the time conflict or requisite issue.

July/09 – Plan Modification Forms and Declaring your Major

A reminder that Plan Modification forms will not be signed by advisors the first two weeks of class in ANY term, during the add deadline because of the high number of students trying to get signed into courses.

In order to qualify to be either Actuarial Science major we look for the following from students. We DO NOT make exceptions to these rules, so if you do not qualify you’ll have to wait another term to try again.

For students in 2A or 2B we require:

10 passed courses (five units)
CAV of at least 70%
No failures, incompletes, WF or DNW marks.

For students in 3A and above we require:

Completion of STAT 230, STAT 231, ACTSC 231 and ACTSC 232
CAV of at least 68%
MAV of at least 68%
No more than 1 excluded course in the major courses