Actuarial
Courses
at UCLA
Actuarial
Courses
at UCLA
Updated 7/26/2019 In the 2018-2019 school year, the Math Department updated its actuarial curriculum, hoping to expand and improve the offerings of the major in order to enhance its value to its students in their future careers to ensure that the major is sustainable in the long term. Consequently, the Department has updated the syllabi of the currently offered actuarial courses, a summary of which is available below:
| Course Number | Course Name | Corresponding Exam/VEE | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 170E | Introduction to Probability and Statistics: Part I (Probability) | SOA P / CAS 1 | This course is an introduction to probability theory. Topics include discrete (binomial, Poisson, etc.) and continuous (Exponential, Gamma, Chi-square, normal) distributions, bivariate distributions, distributions of functions of random variables (including moment generating functions and Central Limit Theorem). |
| 170S | Introduction to Probability and Statistics: Part II (Statistics) | VEE Mathematical Statistics | This course is an introduction to statistics. Topics include sampling; estimation and the properties of estimators; construction of confidence intervals and hypothesis testing. |
| 177 | Theory of Interest and Applications | SOA FM / CAS 2 SOA IFM / CAS 3F |
This course is introduces interest and covers all of exam FM/2 and a small portion of IFM/3F. Topics from FM/2 include: types of interest, time value of money, annuities and similar contracts, loans, bonds, portfolios and general cash flows, rate of return, term structure of interest rates, duration, convexity and immunization, and interest rate swaps. Topics from IFM/3F include: financial derivatives, forwards, futures, and options. |
| 174E | Mathematics of Finance | SOA IFM / CAS 3F | This course covers the first portion of Exam IFM/3F, and covers financial derivatives. Topics include modeling, mathematics, and computation for financial securities; price of risk; random walk models for stocks and interest rates; no-arbitrage theory for pricing derivative securities; Black/Scholes theory; European and American options; Monte Carlo, trees, finite difference methods. |
| 179 | Advanced Topics in Financial Mathematics | This is intended to be a second quarter of IFM/3F material, to be taken after 174E. It will cover additional topics about financial derivatives as well as topics in finance covered on Exam IFM/3F such as mean-variance portfolio theory, Capital Asset Pricing model, etc. | |
| 178A | Foundations of Actuarial Mathematics: Life Insurance and Annuities | SOA LTAM | Along with the first half of Math 178B, this course covers the SOA LTAM exam. This is an introductory course on to the mathematics associated with long term insurance coverages. Topics include single and multiple life survival models, annuities, premium calculations and policy values, reserves, pension plans and retirement benefits. |
| 178B | Foundations of Actuarial Mathematics: Further topics in Long Term Actuarial Mathematics | SOA LTAM SOA STAM |
This exam concludes the coverage of the SOA LTAM exam and begins covering the SOA STAM exam. Topics include multiple state models, pensions, profit testing, topics from statistics, esp. methods of estimation, and background material on probability distributions, especially those used in actuarial work. |
| 178C | Foundations of Actuarial Mathematics: Loss models | SOA STAM | Along with the second half of Math 178B, this course covers the SOA STAM exam. Topics include loss models associated with actuarial problems, severity, frequency, and aggregate loss models, parameter estimation (frequentist, Bayesian), model selection and credibility. |
For the most up-to-date information about UCLA courses that satisfy VEE credit, see the SOA's VEE Directory of Approved Courses and Alternate Options.