Paul Chen
- MSc course: Insurance and Risk Management
- Graduation year: 2022
What motivated you to study MSc Insurance and Risk Management at Bayes Business School?
With a slightly different background, I attended the MSc Insurance and Risk Management programme part-time, while working as a life insurance product manager in London. Prior to starting my journey in the UK, I studied and worked in Taiwan.
The programme is super comprehensive. As an insurance practitioner in a specific line of business, I know the product and operation of my area, but not the other parts of the business. However, after going through this programme I gained a greater understanding of the whole picture.
What did you learn about Insurance and Risk Management from the simulator?
The simulator, in short, is a computer software that allows us to make a great variety of decisions including underwriting capacity, business operation, investments, and reinsurance planning based on real-life scenarios provided by the system. All the decisions we made will directly impact the financial outcome of this fictional company, and after five cycles (years) of operation, we will conclude how "successful" this company has achieved from a financial perspective.
The task reinforced our hard knowledge and allowed us to transform them into soft skills. Sometimes as a student we might feel difficult to understand what in practice a concept means. However, through working on the simulator, we can see how the decisions (based on the interpretation of given scenarios and application of concepts and lecture knowledge) turn into reality (in numbers, the operation results). This is a tremendous sense of achievement as this allows me to see how powerful the skills, I learnt can make a difference. Most importantly, through working closely with my fellow teammates, we built a strong friendship and had a great experience together. This is something that one can never learn from reading books, and the importance of being able to collaborate in modern work settings really cannot be emphasised too much.
We were very pleased to understand that amongst all six companies in our cohort, we have delivered the best results. In order to celebrate the success, we were invited by the Associate Dean of the School, as well as the Course Director, to a nice Mediterranean restaurant for a flavourful and tasty meal. This is completely a surprise to us, but we are very grateful for the recognition from the professors for our hard work.
What advice would you give to MSc Insurance and Risk Management students?
If you have secured your position in the programme, congratulations, you've managed to get the ticket to one of the best programmes around the world. The Bayes MSc Insurance and Risk Management has so much to offer which will certainly help you build a solid foundation for a career in the Insurance industry in the City (of London) and beyond. After going through the programme, I am more confident in knowing the great breadth and depth of the insurance business, both conventional and "trendy" ones. This helps me to become more capable of taking up new challenges at work and thus opening up new possibilities for development and growth.