Master of Actuarial and Financial Engineering (Leuven)

About the programme

This is an English-taught programme of 120 ECTS which prepares students for careers in actuarial science, financial engineering or quantitative risk management within financial institutions.

This master's programme brings:

• basic training in actuarial engineering, insurance, financial products, financial mathematics and engineering, data analytics for finance and insurance, risk management for financial institutions;
• advanced courses showing the latest developments in the field;
• a blend of theoretical course work and computational training;
• an introduction to practical aspects, through the straight-from-the-frontline experience of our staff, guest lecturers, and an internship (6 ECTS);
• a multidisciplinary approach, where technical, quantitative courses come along with course work in (financial and insurance) regulation, prudential regimes, economics and reporting.

Forms of instruction

Lectures (including web lectures), guest lectures by professionals working in practice, computer labs in R, Python and Matlab, and paper based exercises, classroom and home assignments.

The master's programme is jointly organized by the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) and the Faculty of Sciences (department of Mathematics). The majority of classes is organized at FEB in the historical center of Leuven.

Duration: 2 years (full time), 120 ECTS

EEA nationals and Non-EEA nationals who reside in Belgium under a valid residence permit can follow less than 60 ECTS per academic year and accordingly spread their studies in several years. This possibility needs to be discussed with a study career consultant. Note that there are no part-time, evening or weekend courses organized for this category of students.

Structure

The Master’s program consists of two years of 60 ECTS each. The compulsory core consists of about 90 ECTS, 24 of which are accredited to the master’s thesis, the remaining ECTS consist of compulsory courses, organized along five major topics:

• Actuarial Engineering: Life, Health and Pensions (18 ECTS)
• Actuarial Engineering: Data Science Methods (12 ECTS)
• Risk Engineering (18 ECTS)
• Financial Engineering (12 ECTS)
• Regulation (4 ECTS)

You supplement the compulsory courses with electives along with the same five domains, which consist of both business-oriented and research-oriented topics to cover your interests. An optional internship, research project in the LRisk research center, or summer school is also included in the possibilities.