What is Quantitative Finance? What are the future prospects? To help students better understand the Programme, Prof Ng Kah Hwa, Professor of the UIC Financial Mathematics (FM) Programme, shared his experiences on these questions in the FM Programme talk on Wednesday, 15 March.

Prof Ng started the talk with the definition of Quantitative Finance. He explained to students that Quantitative Finance (QF), Financial Engineering (FE) and Financial Mathematics (FM) are equivalent names of the same discipline. They use mathematical techniques to address financial problems such as risk management, as well as to devise new and innovative financial products. Prof Ng also introduced the major applications in Financial Mathematics.

Then he continued to talk about the career opportunities in the QF industry. What are the roles of Quants and the technical skills and domain knowledge needed? What are the educational opportunities for overseas postgraduate studies? He suggested that students find the programme that best suits and services their career needs. They need to decide where to apply, and put together a competitive application. In addition, it is also advisable to have a strong and current knowledge of mathematics, programming, as well as the fundamentals of finance to prepare for graduate studies, according to Prof Ng.

Professor Ng Kah Hwa is the Specialist Consultant in Financial Engineering to the Yunnan Provincial Government Office of Finance, Kunming in China. He is also consultant to numerous financial institutions and companies on financial risk management. Prof Ng graduated with a PhD in Finance from Columbia University in New York. Prior to joining UIC, he held academic positions as the Director of BSc (Quantitative Finance), Director of MSc (Financial Engineering) programmes at the National University of Singapore. He worked in commercial and investment banking at major US and Asian banks and served as the Managing Director in-charge of Financial Engineering and Derivatives at a major Asian bank.

Reporter: Laurel Luo (DST)
Editor: Deen He, Samuel Burgess (MPRO)
(from DST)