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GAUSS Prize 2024: Award for outstanding work in insurance
Markus Maier from the Technical University of Munich has received one of two young talent awards, each worth €2,000, for his master's thesis “Parametric cyber insurance and its potential to close the cyber protection gap.”
His work addresses the growing importance of cyber insurance and examines the potential of parametric products to close existing insurance gaps. “The problem is of enormous importance and has hardly been addressed in the scientific literature to date,” says Prof. Müller. “The necessary mathematics has only been developed in recent years in a different context, but is new in this application.”
Non-profit project “Church in transition”
As part of a project seminar led by Prof. Dr. Rudi Zagst and Tobias Lausser in the winter semester 2024/25 in cooperation with the Catholic parishes of St. Maria Suso and Söflingen in Ulm, three students from the Master's program in Finance and Information Management (FIM) dealt with the ecologically and economically sustainable use of church real estate. Against the backdrop of far-reaching challenges such as falling membership numbers, rising operating costs, and ambitious climate targets, the students developed a data-based software solution that enables church communities to make strategic decisions about their real estate on a sound and transparent basis. The software developed combines mathematical optimization methods with solution-oriented visualizations and supports the parishes in evaluating various scenarios with regard to long-term cost development, space utilization and ecological sustainability. The solution also allows for the continuous adaptation of possible scenarios and the integration of new findings during the decision-making process. This demonstrates both the practical applicability and the transferability of the results to other parishes facing similar challenges. The recommendations for action developed for the two parishes clearly show that significant cost savings are possible through targeted transformation measures for individual buildings. At the same time, the use of church premises can be optimized, and thus, active parish life can be maintained in a climate-friendly manner. Special thanks go to all those involved for their excellent cooperation and support during the project, in particular the parishes of St. Maria Suso and Söflingen as well as the head pastor Philipp Kästle (left in the picture) and Dr. Karin Waiblinger (elected chairwoman of the Ulm parish council; right in the picture).
Research seminar in the Montafon
For the 18th time, doctoral students from the Financial and Actuarial Mathematics research group and the Chair of Energy Trading and Financial Services at the University of Duisburg-Essen met for a joint research seminar in Montafon in the Austrian Alps. With the support of Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Kiesel, Prof. Dr. Christoph Knochenhauer, Prof. Dr. Aleksey Min, Prof. Dr. Matthias Scherer, Prof. Dr. Lorenz Schneider, Prof. Dr. Ralf Werner and Prof. Dr. Rudi Zagst, current topics and problems from the fields of financial mathematics and energy markets were presented and discussed by the doctoral students. In a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere, the seminar provided an excellent platform for the exchange of ideas, the discussion of complex problems and the joint development of solutions. A key factor in this inspiring atmosphere this year was once again the excellent catering and warm hospitality of the sisters of the Maria-Hilf convalescent home, to whom special thanks are due at this point.
We congratulate Constantin Siggelkow on his successful promotion!
Constantin Siggelkow successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Pricing, Optimization, and Risk Hedging in SME Factoring” on 5 February 2025. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Matthias Scherer. We wish Constantin every success for his future career at Munich Re!
Top 10 Worldwide: Our Master’s in Mathematical Finance and Actuarial Science
In a world with a lot of ups and downs we are happy to share that our Master's programme "Mathematical Finance and Actuarial Science" is on a continuous rise in its ranking and has made it now into the top 10 worldwide of the risk.net Quant Finance Master's Guide 2025.
Gumbel in Konstanz
Our exhibition on Emil J. Gumbel was inaugurated on January 10, 2025, with a lecture by Prof. Dr. Matthias Scherer at VHS-Konstanz. The day before, the accompanying documentary film by David Ruf, "Statistics of Crime", was shown at the sold-out Zebra Cinema in Konstanz. Following the screening, Dr. Albert Kümmel-Schnur (University of Konstanz) moderated a panel discussion with Anke Klaaßen (screenwriter), Prof. Dr. Jan Beran (University of Konstanz), and Matthias Scherer.
88th meeting of the German ASTIN Group in Mannheim
For the last time together with Roland Voggenauer, Matthias Scherer co-moderated the "88th Meeting of the German ASTIN Group" during the DAV Autumn Conference in Mannheim on November 18, 2024. After 15 years, Roland Voggenauer handed over the "baton" to Frank Schönfelder. The conference addressed the following topics: Explainable AI from an actuarial perspective (G. Grützner), Agricultural insurance and climate change (J. Bucheli), Optimization with constraints (J. Eisenberg), Extreme forecasts (A. Schmiedt and U. Kamps), and Cyber damages (J. Becker and L. Ruderer). The event concluded with a panel discussion titled "Mandatory Natural Hazard Insurance?"
Munich Risk and Insurance Days 2024
Our third workshop “Munich Risk and Insurance Days,” which took place on October 10th and 11th, 2024 at the Technical University of Munich, was again a great success. Renewed experts from science and industry, including Daniel Bauer, An Chen, Marcus Christiansen, Nils Detering, Corrado de Vecchi, Martin Eling, Jean-David Fermanian, Peter Hieber, Ralf Korn, Marie Kratz, Jan-Frederik Mai, Alfred Müller, Hanspeter Schmidli, Jan-Philipp Schmidt, Stefan Weber, Ralf Werner, and Henryk Zähle, offered exciting and diverse insights into current developments in risk management as well in financial and actuarial mathematics. Their presentations stimulated in-depth discussions and created an ideal platform for the exchange between theory and practice. A big thank goes to our sponsor “Verein zur Förderung der Versicherungswissenschaft in München e. V. ” (Association for the Promotion of Insurance Science in Munich) as well as the organizers of the event: Bettina Haas, Matthias Scherer, Constantin Siggelkow, Corrado De Vecchi, and Dominik de Witte. Your commitment was crucial to the smooth organization and success of the workshop.
Seminar on recent developments in (re)insurance:
Credit, cyber, NatCat and other risks hosted by Munich Re
On 2nd and 3rd of July, Munich Re hosted a seminar offered by the chair titled "Recent developments in (re)insurance: Credit, cyber, NatCat and other risks". Students presented topics of great interest to the industry, fostering valuable interaction between academia and industry professionals. This collaboration highlights the importance of integrating academic research with practical industry insights.
12th Conference in Actuarial Science and Finance - Award
The Conference in Actuarial Science and Finance occurs every two years as part of a joint collaboration between the University of the Aegean, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kobenhavns Universitet and New York University. It is a forum for state-of-the-art results in insurance, finance, and risk management, and attracts top academicians and practitioners from every corner of the world. The scientific committee of the 12th Edition of the conference, held in Karlovasi (Island of Samos, Greece) awarded Constantin Siggelkow, PhD candidate at Chair of Mathematical Finance of the Technical University of Munich, with the 2nd prize of the Best Presentation Awards for young researchers. His joint work with Prof. Matthias Scherer (TUM) titled “Enhancing SME Factoring: A Stackelberg Game-Based Hybrid Pricing Model” develops a hybrid pricing model to mitigate the combination of static default and dynamic adverse selection risk in trade credit factoring for SMEs.