About the Major
The Risk Management curriculum aims to provide students with the skills and expertise to enable them to acquire the theory and methodology behind the scientific process of risk management, with application to actuarial science, finance and other areas of interest. It is designed to provide solid training in the concepts of the risk management process, statistical models and methods of risk management, and good risk management practice.
Core courses in the curriculum emphasise fundamental concepts and nature of risk assessment, risk management and governance from different standpoints while elective courses provide either training in specific Risk Management disciplines or an extension of knowledge aiming to give students more modeling, technical and analytical skills in risk management, including discrete-time models in finance, stochastic calculus with financial applications, and financial time series modeling. Through participating in experiential learning activities including research-based projects, industrial internships and overseas exchanges, students could enhance their knowledge in risk management and exposure in managing risk in practice, and improve their thinking and communication skills.
Career Prospects
- Career opportunities are available in financial institutions and large corporations including banks and consulting firms;
- Graduates readily find employment in government, banking, finance, risk management, insurance, IT, marketing research and many other related sectors in which expertise in quantitative risk analyses and management is in great demand due to the data-driven environment nowadays;
- A growing number of professions depend on such an expertise to help managing risk in the midst of increasing uncertainty in the economy and an upsurge in financial and operational crises.
Internship Programme
- There is no better training than obtaining solid hands-on experience in the real workplace. Our internship programme serves precisely this purpose. As an intern, the student will gain insights into the challenging world and daily activities of risk/quantitative analysts while strengthening his/her technical, analytical and communications skills.
- Students who declare Risk Management as first Major are eligible to join the internship programme. Upon successful job offer, the student may also wish to enrol in the Statistics Internship course in order to have his/her internship recognised as capstone experience.
Programme Highlights
How to diversify the risk of a portfolio such that the future loss is mitigated? How to measure the risk of a constructed portfolio? How to estimate the likelihood of getting a default of a corporate bond? How to estimate the capital requirement for a bank so as to cover its future potential loss with a high probability? The Major in Risk Management provides students with training in various risk management models, methods and applications. With the aid of university teaching grant, the Department has developed the portfolio of optimisation and risk management, called PORTimizer. This software has been used as a teaching and learning toolbox in the Risk Management programme. An on-line version of the software won the following award in 2005: The Best Web Services Applications for Smart Client (Office 2003 or Winforms).
Professional Development
Students majoring in Risk Management may obtain their professional qualifications for risk managers by sitting for the FRM and PRM examinations, organised by the Global Association for Risk Professionals (GARP) and the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA) respectively. In addition, the Major in Risk Management may assist students in developing an actuarial career as some courses in the programme cover parts of the examination syllabuses of the Society of Actuaries (a major actuarial professional body in the US: www.soa.org).
Dr Patrick S C Poon Scholarship in Statistics
In 2012, Dr Patrick S C Poon, member of our Actuarial Science Programme Advisory Board and Distinguished Science Alumnus of the Faculty, kindly pledged to the University for establishing 4 scholarships in support of outstanding undergraduates to pursue Decision Analytics, Risk Management or Statistics studies. The scholarships, each valued HK$50,000, are awarded annually to final-year candidates who pursue a first Major in Decision Analytics, Risk Management or Statistics on the basis of academic merit. Dr Poon is currently the Chairman of Harvest SCP Group Company Limited.
(Video) Introduction of the Major
Student Sharing
ZHAO Jie
2020 BSc graduate (major in Risk Management)
"When I reflect on my four years in the University of Hong Kong BSc(4) programme, I conclude that the experience not only made me a better student, but also prepared me to be a confident, independent and open-minded girl. Through the BSc programme, I met the professors with a wide range of knowledge. Also, with the incredibly supportive classmates and teamwork opportunities, these form a wonderful memory in my life, and the best educational experience I’ve had. Having been shaped in part by the collegial and creative, yet rigorous, environment at HKU, I found myself able to communicate, innovate, and collaborate in ways that enabled me to build a successful communications consulting practice, independent thinking ability and eventually to get my dream job – the investment analyst in an Asset Management Firm in Central."