Actuarial and Financial Sciences

Learning goals The main learning goal is to learn the demographic techniques to study the dynamic characteristics of a population and to understand what is the role of a demographic variable – causes and effects – in the change of social and economic phenomena. The course provides skills for several fields of application, such as, for example, life insurance policies, social-security benefits, health-care and also financial planning. Knowledge and understanding Knowledge and understanding of main population trends and the dynamics of demographic phenomena are expected, together with adequate methodologies to learn about the importance of demographic dimension and related tecnnical practice. Applying knowledge and understanding At the end of the course the student will be able to build and analyse demographic indicators and instruments useful in the insurance sector, with particular reference to the construction of actual and future life tables and their use. The course provides all the tools, both theoretical and methodological, to make a population forecast and to read the results obtained correctly so that they can be used in the actuarial and financial fields. Making judgements Students will be able to evaluate the impact of the evolution of mortality, fertility and migration on the age structure of a population and, viceversa, be able to evaluate the influence that these structural changes will have in the mid and long term on the three components, mortality, fertility and migration. In particular, the course allows the students to choose the most suitable life tables for each specific field of application, especially the actuarial one. Communication skills Attending lessons and passing the final exam, the student acquires the demografic technical and scientific language , which is necessary to communicate results at work and generally speaking in the field of social security and assistance. Learning skills At the end of the course, students passing the exam will have learned the key role of the demographic dimension and will be able to apply the main quantitative tools to manage and analyse the actuarial eand financial processes. The competences acquired can be very useful to work in the field of social welfare plannning.