Buetow says these former students simply got tired of giving away most of their trading profits to employers and struck out on their own. It is, he says, a trend that may continue as QF graduates acquire skills, confidence and professional contacts. It, too, is a joint effort between the College of Business and math department. JMU's new actuarial science program is the first in the nation designed to unite finance specialists and mathematicians in a program that produces actuarial finance specialists, Sochaski says. It is a further specialization of the quantitative finance program.
Students can enter the program through finance or mathematics.
The program requires both math students and finance students to take an additional series of courses team-taught by math and finance professors. The program was created to fill a need in the world of actuarial finance as it relates to insurance companies and policies, Buetow says. Actuaries working for insurance companies set the price of policies, and financial specialists invest the money until it has to be paid out. This in turn gives the students a great advantage over other traditional finance students when they enter the marketplace.