DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCES WITH INSURANCE MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROJECTS

The updated and upcoming versions of the Core Syllabus for Actuarial Education in Europe by the Actuarial Association of Europe and the International Actuarial Association Education Syllabus reveal that professional competences in the actuarial field are becoming more complex and multidisciplinary. This fact is a real challenge for actuarial educators, especially in some countries, like Spain, where University courses have a strict scheme that makes difficult the combination of competences of different academic disciplines. In this paper we describe an innovative experience in the MSc in Actuarial Science at the University of Málaga (Spain) that attempts to facilitate the development of professional competences that require skills and contents from different courses. The project is based on requiring students, in small groups, to develop a model in electronic format capable of analysing the short and long run dynamics of an insurance product (in particular, an automobile insurance product) and to make a professional presentation. Students involved in the project need to incorporate skills and contents from the courses in stochastic processes and insurance models and applications, as well as general competences like oral and ICT skills. The results, which are analysed at the end of this paper by means of a survey conducted the last academic year, show that our students’ perceptions of the usefulness of the project and satisfaction with the experience are quite satisfactory.