Subject Code/Name: ETC3530 - Contingencies in insurance and pensions Workload: 1 x 2hr lecture per week (via Zoom)
1 x 1.5 hr tutorial per week (reduced to 1 hr this semester due to teaching constraints, should be increased to 1.5 hrs from next year)
Assessment: 10% quizzes - each week from weeks 2-11 a quiz was done in tutorials. As long as you attempt the quiz, you get 1% regardless of your mark, so it is an easy 10%. I found the quizzes to be quite basic however, so it should be reasonably simple to obtain the full 10% even without only attempting it once.
10% Individual Assignment - The individual assignment was designed to get you up to scratch with using R, a programming language used in this subject. It mainly involved working with some data in R to create functions that can calculate values of actuarial products, before plotting those on a graph and comparing their shape. This was an excellent assignment, and not too labour intensive. Most students did quite well, so it was not extremely difficult.
20% Group Assignment - Now this was an assignment. Using R Shiny, each student had to create in groups from sizes 3-4 a Shiny dashboard that outputted the values of actuarial reserves. In order to get full marks, you needed to write code from scratch in R and stress test it to ensure that it was perfect. This was extremely labour intensive. In order to do well, you needed to put in a ton of effort so that you could maximise your marks. I found myself working on this very heavily throughout semester, so I am glad that I had the time available to work on it. Most groups did do reasonably well, but try and
put in as much effort as possible, as it is worth the reward. I was lucky I had a strong team available to help, so maximised my marks in this regard.
60% Exam - The exam covered all topics, but was heavily geared towards week 9 onwards (as that made up around half the exam). It consisted of 4 short answer questions, which you did online and handwrote before uploading your answers to your computer using either a QR code scanner or emailing your answers through to the exam team due to COVID-19. I found the exam to be very long, as was pressed for time throughout. However, the questions were not excessively difficult, just very long-winded, so if you are taking the exam next year onwards, then be aware that the exam is quite long and you need to try and prepare as much as possible to do questions in the shortest amount of time you can take.
Recorded Lectures: Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available: No exams available, though would have been handy if one was provided.
Textbook Recommendation: Actuarial Mathematics for Life Contingent Risks - 3rd edition by David Dickson is recommended, but not necessary. What I would recommend though is the
CM1 Course Notes from the Actuarial Education Company (ActEd). They will make learning this subject far easier to understand. ActEd knows the syllabus excessively well, and writes it in a way that can be easily understood. The lectures and course content, particularly from week 3 onwards follow the ActEd syllabus, so try and obtain it if you can!
Lecturer(s):Dan Zhu - Took lectures from weeks 1-2 as well as providing revision material to get you up to date with the subject. Dan covered a lot of mathematical proofs in her lectures that were not examinable, so can be quite dry and intensive watching her lectures. That being said, they were still useful in starting off the course.
Hamza Hanbali - Took the lectures from weeks 3-9 as well as being chief examiner. What a legend! Hamza was recently hired by Monash as a permanent replacement to teach the core actuarial subjects in life insurance. He is amazing! His lectures always had a 'meme of the week' and had lots of timelines to explain actuarial products, which I preferred to long mathematical proofs as it was far more conceptual. I hope that in the future Hamza can lecture all lectures for this subject.
Maziar Nikpour - Took the lectures from weeks 10-12. Maz was great in terms of his industry experience, as he currently works in the industry so can provide more background knowledge as to how profit is calculated and how contracts taught in his 3 lectures are used. That being said, his lectures were a little dry so try rewatch them if you can.
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2020
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Comments: Firstly, I'd have a look at Fraxyz review
here to provide some context for the subject. Unfortunately Colin no longer teaches this subject, so it has been hard since then to find a replacement. But this year Hamza Hanbali took the subject for the first time, and what a change it was! Hamza sets difficult assessments, but what I like about them is that they are really practical and relatable to what you would encounter at work. The second assignment in particular, although being incredibly labour-intensive (my longest assignment ever tbh) was very very valuable, as it gave an insight into how to apply theoretical knowledge into practice.
Topics covered included life assurance contracts, life annuity contracts, evaluation of those, premiums, reserves, joint lives and contingent benefits, mortality profit, competing risks, unit linked and accumulating with profit contracts, profit testing and reserving aspects of profit testing. All of which are in CM1 from chapters 14-27 (14 is needed as an intro to the subject). Therefore, it’s really imperative that you have access to CM1 in some form, as it reinforces what you’ve taught, which can be quite intensive.
Tutorials - The tutorials were standard going through tutorial questions, plus having a break in the middle to go through quizzes. I had Julie and Farheena as my tutors, and they were both experts and knowledgable in what they taught. I appreciated that they went through each question from scratch - so students could comprehend what was going on in front of them. That being said, the tutes were quite rushed due to time constraints - as because of COVID all 4 tutorials were run back-to-back, so they were only 1 hr duration such that tutors could fit them all in and have a break in between. This was annoying, as more time would've been welcome to go through more questions to understand the concepts. Despite that, they were still near the top level of all my tutorials taken at university, so I really appreciated having the time to understand the concepts being taught, no matter how short they were.
Overall though,
now is the time to take this subject. It has been improved so much so that it is by far the best actuarial unit I have taken at university. Would I recommend this as an elective though? Probably not, because it is still quite mathematical and intensive, so I would say only do this if you have to, or want to for actuarial accreditation. But this unit has been redesigned from last year, so does not resemble the unit taught in the past.
But as Hamza has said, the goal for this unit is to make it as job-ready for you as possible. And that is exactly what has happened! Hamza knows his stuff incredibly well, and is the perfect fit for this unit. It is challenging but very rewarding. So try take it when you can, preferably in 2021 or 2022, as it has improved significantly compared to previous years!