Actuarial education was introduced to China nearly 10 years ago, and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics also set up actuarial specialty in the original insurance major, and enrolled actuarial undergraduates for the first time in 1994, which was the first university in Shanghai to recruit undergraduates at that time. After two years of actuarial education, I am tired of some experiences worth summing up and problems to be solved. For example, what kind of talents does actuarial education train? Does the market in China need actuarial graduates? Does actuarial education meet the development goals of Caida?

As teachers of actuarial teaching, we have the responsibility to study this problem seriously and scientifically. To this end, we have made suggestions and applications to university leaders and set up special topics. We have also held many actuarial seminars. Actuaries of life insurance companies and scholars and experts from other universities, including our teachers and classmates, were invited to brainstorm on a series of related issues. I want to summarize some issues and opinions discussed in these seminars in order to further guide the in-depth study of this issue. It provides reference for the further development of actuarial education. However, limited by space and our research progress, the following subheadings only discuss two issues, and further discussion and solutions will be given in subsequent articles and research reports.

Second, what is actuarial?

Obviously, understanding and grasping the subject of actuarial science is the premise and foundation of our discussion, and it is also directly related to the final decision of the problem and the direction and implementation plan of our school. However, even our teachers who are currently engaged in actuarial teaching may not have a very clear understanding and consistent views on this subject. Because of life, let's discuss this problem first.

Actuarial science is constantly improved from the development of insurance industry. Because the basic responsibility of insurance companies is to share risks and compensate for losses, insurance companies are generally required to have sufficient ability to spread risks. Insurance companies are required to calculate pure premium (insurance premium) and additional premium respectively when pricing. There can be no profit factor in the pure premium, which shows that the insurance company is absolutely "fair", while the additional premium mainly reflects the operating expenses of the insurance company and the reasonable profit recognized by the government. Therefore, as long as the insurance company has the ability to spread risks and sell a large number of policies according to the law of large numbers, the pure premium charged by the insurance company for each policy is equal to the expected loss to be borne by the policy, which leads to the pure rate being equal to the loss rate. It can be found that the key to determine the pure premium in insurance pricing is payout ratio's calculation, so which risks can be calculated, which are insurable losses, how to control the losses, etc. have always been the questions that theoretical circles have been asking, which is the original question of actuarial research. The original definition of actuarial science is "to determine how much insurance premium an insurance company should charge by estimating the probability of loss accidents such as fire, theft and personal death." In the actuarial study of life insurance, the method of mutual fund was originally adopted, which has great limitations and can only consider discrete situations. Later, due to the development of probability theory, the verification of life insurance expenses is mainly to determine the present value function (random variable) and the corresponding loss distribution. At this time, the pure premium (pure rate) of unit insured amount is the mathematical expectation of the present value function of unit insured amount, that is, the expected loss. This calculation model has been able to measure the insurance cost under the condition of continuous payment. However, no matter which method is adopted, there are two basic problems in determining the cost of life insurance: the calculation of interest rate and mortality rate. Before the 1970s, interest rates in various countries were generally controlled by the state, so at that time, the calculation of interest rates was not the main concern of actuarial science, and the loss distribution (mortality calculation) in life insurance business, that is, the establishment of life table, became the core work of actuarial science. /kloc-At the end of 0/7, Edmund gave birth to his first life table. Hally, a British mathematician and astronomer, became the symbol of the development of actuarial science. In the early actuarial practice, teaching and research, the compilation of life table is everywhere, and it is still the subject of actuarial research. In the actuarial research of non-life insurance, it is mainly to determine the losses of natural disasters and accidents. Unlike life insurance actuarial research, there is no relatively stable loss distribution like life table. Therefore, non-life insurance actuaries always focus on the frequency, scope and control of losses. So far, non-life insurance actuarial has developed two important branches. One is the loss distribution theory, which studies the future loss distribution and the relationship between loss and compensation in the case of limited statistical data in the past. The second is risk theory. By analyzing the distribution of loss frequency and loss amplitude, this paper studies the compound stochastic process of accident frequency and loss size each time, in order to gain insight into how much money an insurance company should have before it goes bankrupt, and evaluate the compound stochastic process of bankruptcy probability. However, with the development of economy, actuarial science has already gone beyond the narrow range of rate determination. Especially after 1970s, the market interest rate has changed greatly, and the risk of insurance funds has become the core issue of actuarial research. Firstly, the asset portfolio and liability structure of insurance companies are analyzed to ensure the solvency and profitability of insurance companies, such as what indicators are used to measure investment risk, the rationality of portfolio, the matching of assets and liabilities, etc., which has attracted the attention of actuarial theory and practice. It can be seen that the responsibilities of modern actuaries of insurance companies have included two aspects: first, listening to the cost accounting of insurance products, in fact, quantitatively evaluating and pricing risks; The second is the financial management of insurance companies, including the investment management of company assets, sensitivity analysis and portfolio analysis of investment income, and assets and liabilities (the liabilities of insurance companies mainly enter reserves, which is a reasonable match of uncertain liabilities). Due to the continuous improvement of financial markets in economically developed countries and regions, market competition is also very fierce. The pricing of insurance companies in developed countries has been in a state of complete competition. When calculating the total premium, the profit has been set to zero or even less, so the insurance company's ability to handle the risk of insurance funds completely determines the competitiveness of the policy price. In addition, insurance companies, especially life insurance companies (because of the long insurance period) have been plagued by interest rate risk, which forces actuarial science to conduct in-depth research on financial management in theory and practice. Actuaries have made many research achievements in the field of financial management, and they have accumulated rich practical experience in this field. For this reason, the North American Actuaries Association pointed out in the Report of Future Actuaries Panel from 65438 to 0988 that actuaries are private and public financial designers and potential enterprise managers, which is the intelligent core based on actuarial profession, and its intelligent core is empirical analysis, analysis, measurement, estimation, transfer and reflection on the financial status of future accidents. "This means that the employment scope of actuaries is gradually expanding, such as being entrusted with heavy responsibilities in banks, consulting companies, investment companies, large multinational companies, accounting firms, trade unions and government agencies. They help companies to make pension plans, determine the appropriate investment portfolio, estimate the company's operating costs (uncertain costs), and estimate the risks of international trade and overseas investment; To provide the government with suggestions on the cost analysis of medical system, compensation methods for work-related injuries, AIDS countermeasures, social security system, etc., and to predict the impact of the newly promulgated laws of the government on the economy. At the same time, the research field of actuarial science has also expanded accordingly.