ISBN(s): 979-8-89016-313-4 | 979-8-89016-187-1
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Overview
This textbook is a recommended reading for the SOA Exam FM syllabus.
Welcome to an alternative approach to the teaching and learning of financial mathematics! Our textbook is designed for mathematics/actuarial students with a strong grounding in, and understanding of, a basic first-year calculus curriculum.
Our target audience includes students who plan to study for and/or write the established actuarial examinations or receive university earned credit as made available around the world and, some day, to have a career in the actuarial or finance professions.
This textbook is designed to provide the reader with a general approach to understanding financial mathematics with respect to a wide range of financial transactions, including annuities, mortgages, personal loans, and bonds, as well as advanced topics such as duration and immunization. Although formulas and mathematical relationships are presented in the text, all examples are solved from first principles, and we propose that any student should solve all financial mathematics problems in the same way; that is, from first principles.
As previously stated, this textbook assumes a knowledge of introductory calculus, so problems are posed whose solutions may require the use of derivatives, or integrals, or both. A comfort with exponents and logarithms is also assumed.
This textbook also provides plenty of exercises for students to practice on, many of which have have been created by the authors and many that have been taken (with permission) from past SOA financial math exams.
Highlights and Details
- SOA Exam FM Recommended: A recommended reading for the SOA Exam FM syllabus
- Expert Authors: Developed by Robert Brown and Steve Kopp, with 80 years of combined actuarial teaching experience.
- Comprehensive Coverage: Covers key topics like annuities, loans, bonds, and advanced concepts such as duration and immunization.
- First-Principles Approach: Encourages problem-solving from foundational principles, minimizing reliance on memorized formulas.
- Extensive Coverage & Practice: Features 223 examples, 968 exercises, and case studies to connect concepts to practical scenarios.
About the Authors
Steve Kopp
Steve Kopp graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1982 with an honours BA in Economics and Mathematics. He added an MSc in Statistics in 1984 (Western). Steve is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (1995) and a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (1995). Steve began teaching actuarial science and statistics at the University of Western Ontario in 1984. He left teaching and began doing actuarial work with the London Life Insurance company in 1990. He returned to teaching full time in 1994 and he presently teaches actuarial science and statistics to a wide variety of students at the University of Western Ontario.
Steve has been a member of various Society of Actuaries exam committees since 1997 and is currently the Chair of the SOA’s Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics (FAM) exam. In his days as an undergraduate student, he was the sports editor at the student newspaper, the Gazette. He was also the sports director at the student radio station, CHRW where today he still has a weekly radio show. Steve has three children.
Robert Brown
Rob retired from the University of Waterloo program in Actuarial Science in 2010 after 39 years of teaching and research. In that time, Rob wrote seven books and over sixty refereed papers. His research focus is the design of financial security programs in times of rapidly shifting demographics. Rob was President of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries in 1990/91, President of the Society of Actuaries in 2000/01 and President of the International Actuarial Association in 2014. Rob was also Research Chair for the Ontario Expert Commission on Pensions in 2007/08. Rob now resides in Victoria, BC.