Professor Ken Sen Tang
Ken Sen Tang is the University Research Chair Professor of the University of Waterloo and the Associate Director of the Waterloo Research institute in Insurance, Securities and Quantitative finance (WatRISQ). Formerly he held the Canada Research Chair Professor in Quantitative Risk Management (2005-2010) in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo, Canada. He is affiliated with the Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing as the Cheung Kong Scholar and the Hon. Director of China Institute for Actuarial Science (CIAS). Dr. Tan was a founding council member of the Joint Risk Management section of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and he was subsequently re-elected for the period 2004-2007. He was the elected council member of the SOA Education and Research Section 2007-2010. Currently, he is the co-editor of North American Actuarial Journal (NAAJ) and the Associate Editor of the Annals of Actuarial Science. He has authored many research articles in actuarial science, insurance and finance, and he publishes in leading actuarial, finance and mathematics journals. Part of his paper "Developing Mortality Improvement Formulae: the Canadian Insured Lives Case Study", co-authored with M. Hardy and J. Li, is used in the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) Guidance Material. Dr. Tan has received several awards, including the 1996-97 Redington Prize, the NAAJ Annual Prizes 2001 and 2003, and the 2012 Charles A. Hachemeister. In 2007 he was among the few actuaries to be granted the first Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst (CERA) credential by the SOA, based on his years of leadership in the field of enterprise risk management.
Professor David Blake
David Blake is Director of the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School, and the chairman of Square Mile Consultants, a training and research consultancy. He is also: co-founder of the International Longevity Risk and Capital Markets Solutions Conferences; co-inventor of the Cairns-Blake-Dowd stochastic mortality model; and co-founder with JPMorgan of the LifeMetrics Indices. In 2011, he won the Robert I. Mehr award from the American Risk and Insurance Association for his seminar paper on mortality risk transfers. The paper is credited with helping to develop a new global capital market in mortality risk transfers between pension funds, life assurers and capital market investors, leading to the world's first pension buy-out in 2006 and the world's first pension buy-in and first longevity swap in 2007.
Professor Richard MacMinn
Professor Richard D. MacMinn, BA, MA, PhD, is the first holder of the Edmondson-Miller Chair in Insurance and Financial Services at Illinois State University and was previously the first holder of the Swiss Re Chair in the Management of Risk at the University of Nottingham. He was editor of the Journal of Risk and insurance, the lead journal in the world on insurance and risk management, published by the American Risk and Insurance Association from 1998 through 2006. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Journal of Insurance Issues and the Quarterly Journal of Economics and Finance. Professor MacMinn served as a board member of the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association from 2000-2003, as a board member for the American Risk and Insurance Association from 2003-2006 and is a member of the American Risk and Insurance Association, Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association, European Group of Risk and Insurance Economists, Southern Risk and Insurance Association, Western Risk and Insurance Association, American Economic Association and American Finance Association. He has published in journals including the journal of Risk and Insurance, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Geneva Papers, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Journal of Finance. He has thrice won the prestigious Mehr Award in addition to a number of other awards from the American Risk and Insurance Association, Casualty Actuarial Society, and General Insurance Research Organization in the United Kingdom and Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association for his publications.
