Career opportunities of Actuarial and Financial Engineering
The Actuarial and Financial Engineering master's programme prepares students for professional opportunities or further PhD studies in Mathematical Statistics at the University of Tartu or elsewhere. The University of Tartu offers doctoral programmes in Mathematics, Economics or Mathematical Statistics with specialisation in Financial Mathematics.
Our graduates are welcome at:
- Banks and other financial institutions
- Insurance companies
- Financial departments of various companies
- Analytics departments of various companies
- Academic career and PhD studies
Positions our graduates are/have been holding, an incomplete list:
- Actuary at ERGO Insurance SE
- Data Analyst at Energy Sales Department in Eesti Energia
- Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at BigBank AS
- Statistical Programmer at StatFinn Oy
- Statistical Data Analyst at STACC (Software Technology and Applications Competence Center)
- Senior Scoring Risk Analyst at 4finance AS (Latvia)
- Software Engineer at Facebook
- Pricing Actuary at Swedbank P&C Insurance AS
- Specialist at Agricultural Registers and Information Board
- Financial Director at E.Gulbja Laboratorija (Latvia)
- PhD students at different universities
Stories of alumni
"Currently I’m working as a senior scoring risk analyst in one of the Europe’s largest FinTech companies called “AS 4finance” which is headquartered in Riga and operating across 15 countries. The usage of a cutting edge technology is a must, therefore a development of advanced credit risk models, as well as maintenance, requires a sound mathematical background which has to be empowered with serious computational skill set. Nowadays the data flows are growing even more rapidly and nobody “talks big data” anymore it’s now considered being just a norm, thus the role of a senior scoring risk analyst has transformed to being part-time risk analyst and becoming a part-time data scientist.
During my Master studies in Tartu I really enjoyed the combination of theoretical classes and a balanced amount of computer labs taught in R and Python. The core classes of computational finance and insurance mathematics have given a solid basis to work in a financial industry whereas the primary modeling and scientific computing skill set obtained in the computer labs widened with some of data science MOOC courses (available at coursera, edX, Stanford online, etc) enabled me as a program graduate to operate in a data driven industry where a good skill set is very much appreciated. The toolbox you get from those classes is a great starting point for risk modeling and I still recall the deep statistical discussions with the supervisor of my master’s thesis Raul Kangro during the last semester of my studies. That was a great advisory he gave and even now sometimes I use those suggestions and the set of actions when solving a complex statistical or computational problem. Meanwhile having a truly international study environment enriched with incredible hospitality of local students coached me how to operate in a truly multi cultural environment and made my time in Tartu very pleasant.
After graduation I went back to my homeland and rejoined the actuarial team as a junior pricing actuary in the market leading non-life insurance company “AAS Balta”, soon after (approximately a year later) being promoted to pricing actuary. Enhanced theoretical basis in insurance mathematics helped me to design my risk models better and add some innovative features to those models. During the period of being an actuary I also supervised 2 bachelor statistics students having a long term internships in the actuarial department (4 months each) which were entitled to be among the best of the particular year. In those internships together with students we explored the opportunities to apply some of the stochastic reserving algorithms we lightly touched during my studies in Tartu, thus this was an extended their knowledge and I was able to satisfy my curiosity in this area.
Finally, I recommend any young fellow to keep an open mind and take the well founded knowledge of financial mathematics taught at the University of Tartu and definitely broaden the knowledge and skill set with the great opportunities offered by online learning, especially while studying in Tartu and having a great consultancy and expertise available by the faculty stuff."
Agris Vaselāns, M.S. (cum laude), 2013
"An outstanding advantage of the master’s programme is not only in the comprehensive and insightful knowledge in a field of financial and actuarial mathematics. It also gives aspiration to develop and grow professionally. An advanced knowledge and skills, acquired within the programme, provide a strong basis for a successful career both in financial sector and academia."
Maryna Tverdostup