Ken Seng Tan

Mitigating risk

Any investment has inherent risks; what is important is managing or mitigating risk exposure. Ken Seng’s research focuses on providing innovative risk management solutions that help companies and investments remain sound over the long-term. “Hopefully the kind of information my analysis generates will help companies and protect policy holders”, states Ken Seng. “The last thing you want is to find that you’ve been paying premiums on a life insurance policy for 20-30 years, and then when you need to cash the investment, you find that the company and your investment are gone.”

Analyzing methods for diminishing risk creates high-dimensional mathematical problems. Solving these kinds of problems requires high-powered computing and complex algorithms (Quasi-Monte Carlo) that simulate the behaviour of systems using low discrepancy sequences. Ken Seng’s work draws on ideas from finance, economics, mathematics, probability, and numerical analysis to speed up the process of financial calculations. He also works closely with industry.

“We are very much involved with practitioners. And I enjoy talking to those practitioners, understanding the problems faced by them and hopefully we can collaborate and develop solutions,” says Ken Seng. Ken Seng had an interesting year in 2005. In addition to the CRC he was named a Cheung Kong Scholar by the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) in Beijing. The programme was established to improve China’s standard of education and intellectual competitiveness. As a programme scholar, Ken Seng will visit China and exchange best-practices ideas with collaborators and students.

Ken Seng is also one of the inaugural executives of the Enterprise Risk Management Institute International and the Institute of Quantitative Finance and Insurance (IQFI).

University of Waterloo Mathematics, Annual Report 2005