Hello everyone. My name's Ivan Guo,
and I'm from the School of Mathematics here at Monash University.
I'm the Course Director for the Master of Financial Mathematics program here and
today I'm here to tell you a little bit more about the program itself.
Financial mathematics is a very young area of mathematics that has developed
since about the 1970s with the discovery of the Black-Scholes-Merton option
pricing formula. The option pricing formula itself is very impactful and famous,
and these guys went on to win a Nobel Prize in the nineties because of it.
Financial mathematics is all about modeling the uncertainties in the up and down
of the financial market. As we see over the years,
there has been many turbulent events in the financial market,
the most famous of which is perhaps the 2008 global financial crisis. Also,
we saw in the past few years the impact the pandemic has on the global economy.
The area of financial mathematics is very interdisciplinary.
It contains aspects of finance, economics, as well as mathematics, statistics,
as well as parts of computer science. In terms of mathematics,
which is what I'm focused on, we combine various bits of pure mathematics,
applied mathematics and statistics together. So in terms of pure mathematics,
there's a lot of studies of differential equations,
both partial differential equations and stochastic differential equations.
We also use a lot of ideas from probability and statistics to help us model the
uncertainties of the financial market. In terms of applied mathematics,
we use a lot of tools from computational mathematics and optimisation to help us
optimise strategies, solve simulation problems,
as well as solve differential equations. And then finally,
in terms of computer science, we use many ideas such as machine learning,
AI in our program these days as well. In fact,
I'll say programming is a key skill that we hope that you'll gain as well along
inside this program.
In terms of the career opportunities of studying Financial Mathematics,
typically students of this field go on and perform a quantitative role in some
sort of financial institution. So, this could be a financial analyst,
a quantitative support or research role in a financial company.
In terms of the type of financial company you could find yourself in,
you've got the typical investment banks,
which are focused on pricing and trading financial products.
So these could be stocks, financial contracts, interest rates, foreign exchange,
whatever you can think of. So, in these companies,
it's also very important to understand risk and how to manage them.
There's different types of risk associated with the financial markets.
You have the typical risk that comes from the markets itself,
but you also have liquidity risk, systematic risk, model risks, and so on.
So risk management is also a crucial part of this field. On the other side,
we also have company that relies on this industry to serve their function.
The most important example for us,
perhaps the superannuation industry or the fund management industry. Australia,
while not being the biggest country in the world in terms of population,
we actually have the world's fourth-largest superannuation pool valued
at about $3.5 trillion, and that is a very big number,
and I think that's perhaps a surprise to many people. Finally,
there are also job opportunities in the hedge fund industry.
So these are your arbitrage funds,
your high frequency traders where you're sort of doing very exciting trades on a
day-to-day basis. So, why choose this course here at Monash University?
While Monash University is one of the Group of Eight universities here in
Australia and is perhaps the biggest in terms of student numbers,
over the past few years,
Monash has steadily climbed in global university rankings. As you can see,
they're currently ranked at about the top 50. Our course in particular,
that is the Master of Financial Mathematics course,
is also ranked by risk.net as one of the top programs in the world.
Let me tell you a little bit more about our course structure and our entry
requirements.
The full Master of Financial Mathematics course is a two year program that has
parts A, B, and C, and we'll see what those parts mean in a second.
In terms of entry requirements, most students will come in at part A,
so they'll be doing the entire two year program from beginning to finish.
Some students who come in with a mathematics degree,
so perhaps a Bachelor of Science and Mathematics or some sort of Major in
Mathematics or related discipline may go straight into Part B if they have
already taken some subjects that we offer before.
For a very small number of students who have come in with Honours in Mathematics
or perhaps extensive industry experience in quantitative finance,
they might be able to do a one year program where they only do part B.
Now, here's the course structure itself.
In Part A - this is a one semester,
six month part where we'll be taking four units,
essentially third year level units to help you brush up on your mathematics,
to prepare you for part B. Part B is the meat of the program.
That is a year long, two semester,
eight unit component that contains many specialised units in financial
mathematics, including stochastic calculus, quant risk management,
and computational methods in finance.
Here is a table to show you some of the units that we have.
As you can see both part A and B have a number of core units that we recommend
everyone to take in order to complete the course. But,
there is also room to choose some electives. For your benefit,
we have categorised the electives into three broad categories.
We have quantitative research,
which are about learning the mathematics,
more about the mathematics behind what we do. We have investing in trading.
It's there if you are interested in learning more about finance,
business and economics. And then finally, there's data analytics,
which are there if you're interested in more computer science fields such as
machine learning and AI. You can mix and match between all of these.
Finally, the capstone part of our program is Part C,
which is perhaps the most popular part of our program because,
for most students,
this involves doing an industry internship for a whole semester.
So during this semester, which is 12 weeks long,
you'll be placed at an industry partner working on a project with them.
Now for some students, instead of doing industry internships,
you can also do a research project with one of our academics,
or you can even take a minor internship or minor project,
which is 6 weeks in instead of 12,
and supplement that with additional electives. So once again,
this is a very important and popular part of our program because it allows
students access to the industry.
It serves as a gateway for them in their first step towards their career.
In terms of the student experience,
we have a number of student activities held throughout the year,
including welcome and orientation sessions, various social events,
opportunity to attend seminars and colloquiums and so on.
We also have a great study space for students here at the School of Mathematics,
which has been recently refurbished. So this includes study areas,
tutorial rooms, and space where you can engage with other students.
One very interesting part of our facility is the so-called Bloomberg Terminal
Lab. Now, if you didn't know what this is,
a Bloomberg terminal is a very specialised computer terminal,
usually found in financial institutions and banks to help them retrieve realtime
market data. Now,
it's very rare to find these terminals in academic institutions, but for us,
we're very lucky to have an entire laboratory full of these terminals.
So we'll be holding many of our classes and tutorials in those rooms where
students can access these Bloomberg terminals,
have experience in logging in and using the various commands to retrieve
financial data and manipulate them.
So I think this is an excellent way of getting some experience to add to your
repertoire in your future career search.
In terms of scholarships and fees,
there's a number of study grants discounts available for students depending on
your eligibility.
We also have a partnership with the Global Association of Risk Professionals in
offering scholarships to one of their professional accredited entrance exams.
So the accreditation here is the financial risk manager accreditation,
and each year we have a number of places where our students can take their exam
for free.
And many of our students have taken this offer in the past and found this very
helpful. So where are our students now?
Our program started in 2016.
So since then we have over a hundred students graduating from the program.
We did a quick survey of what they're doing now. One very interesting fact.
Over 86% of them have attained a position within six months of their
graduation, and within one year, almost all of them, that's 97%,
have found their first job.
I think this is very pleasing to know for students because it's important to
know how your study here can serve as a gateway to your career path.
Very quickly on the pie chart on the right,
you can see the type of industry these students are working under. As expected,
most of them are working in the finance industry,
in wealth management companies and banks and so on.
But there are also other opportunities in FinTech companies, consulting,
as well as academic positions.
Here is a sample of the industry partners that we've worked over the years that
have offered placement positions to our students. So as you can see,
you have the traditional financial institutions such as National Australian
Bank. You have the superannuation funds like CBUS and HESTA,
and you also have other companies like Optiva, which is a hedge fund trader,
as well as various international companies.
Thank you very much for tuning into this presentation today.
I hope you found this very useful,
and I look forward to meeting some of you here at Monash.