Here is a selection of previously published AFC-sponsored research.
- Canadian Retirement Incomes: How Much Do Financial Returns Matter? (2014)
- The Canadian National Retirement Risk Index: Employing Statistics Canada’s LifePaths to Measure the Financial Security of Future Canadian Seniors (2011)
- Pricing the Cost of Basic Needs for the Canadian Elderly (2010)
- Stochastic Modelling Symposium (2006 and 2008)
The AFC participated in the Stochastic Modelling Symposium organized by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries Committee on Investment Practice in 2006 and again in 2008. In both years, the AFC awarded a prize in the amount of $5,000 to the author of the paper honoured with the Outstanding Paper Award. - The Bootstrap for Calibrating Equity Models (2004)
In 2016, a generous donation of $100,000 was received from Joe Cheng to provide funding for specific research projects by graduate students. The Actuarial Research Internship Program was created, and a special committee was established to administer the program. Four internships were announced in 2018. The Selection Committee evaluated them and unanimously selected Ms. Zhuoxuan Wu (University of Waterloo) as the winner. Vanessa was supervised by Ken Seng Tan, for her master’s thesis “On the Comparison of Distribution-Free Chain Ladder Reserve Estimates and Risk Adjustment Under the Framework of IFRS 17” in May 2020.
Vanessa describes her experience as follows.
As many of you who may be struggling for the ocean of research topics or wandering on the road towards the significance of researching experience, I also “scratched my head” at an early-middle stage of my research. If conducting research is like building a house, I have worked out several sketches and teared all those up, built the ground floor and pushed it down, decorated the interior and fully renovated.
Vanessa Zhuoxuan Wan
It was not until several months after I started my career that I realized how valuable this back-and-forth procedure was. Knowledge learned from research is definitely important, but what benefitted me the most from the research experience is the capability which enables me to respond to new tasks quickly and to think with broader mindset when encountering bottlenecks. Every difficulty I met during my research is like a miniature of hardship I go through during daily work, and I am better positioned to resolve these problems thanks for what I have gained from the research.
Thus, no matter you are threatened by the possible difficulties you foresee for the research or just simply wondering “do it or not”, I would like to share without hesitation that “Go for it, enjoy the journey, and you will be grateful to every effort you have taken”.
At last but not least, I would like to take this chance to thank my supervisor Professor Ken Seng Tan for the greatest support and guidance throughout the journey of my research.