NextGen Risk: Team Profile | University of Toronto

Megan Whitehead (Advisor)

I am the manager of employer relations and career development. I actually work in the department of Statistical Sciences at U of T and I support undergraduate students in stats and actuarial science. We do try to engage our students with different opportunities to connect with employers. Knowing that we have actuaries, [competition organizers] reached out to me, and we put out a call to students in the departments under our umbrella.

I think just for me, like I do work with industry professionals. To prepare, I’ll probably be pumping our judges and our industry professionals for information about trends they’re seeing. We can connect with them and hopefully I can offer [that knowledge to the team members].

Ryan Law

I’m in my third year studying accounting at Rotman commerce. I felt like the opportunity to do a case between risk and insurance was really interesting to me. Because currently I’m working in reinsurance as a broker. I get to work with both reinsurers and insurance companies.

Fun fact, I didn’t know what reinsurance was only until when I started my internship in January. It was very new to me. Obviously, I knew what insurance was, to an extent. For example, your Apple Care, your warranty. But then the opportunity came to me, and then I decided, ‘Oh, why not?’ It’s a new industry. I want to learn and I’ve definitely been learning a lot these past few months.

I think one of the reasons why I chose to take this opportunity is that I wasn’t completely sure if I wanted to stick with Accounting. I felt this was a great opportunity to branch out into insurance. It’s not really a sales role. It’s the analytical side, the back end. Usually, relationship-building happens more at the senior level. I get to work a lot in Excel and PowerPoint, and I think that has really helped me grow in that analytical side of things as well.

Selina Ge

I’m a third-year student at University of Toronto, double majoring in Science and Math with a minor in Computer Science. I have completed two terms of a consulting insurance internship already on group benefits. And upcoming in this summer, another life insurance internship.

I don’t really have exposure to P&C yet, so I believe this case competition will be a very good opportunity for me to be exposed to the P&C world.

I still want to pursue a role on the consulting side, but definitely I want some exposure into P&C too. I think the competition will bring me a lot of exposure to different professionals. I do want to see how those cases will [reveal] some of the industry projects and some of data that we are going to analyze.

Karin Jakubcová

I’m studying financial economics, so I’m completely out of the insurance industry. This is super-new to me. I have some experiences with case competitions, but they were more on the economic side. Since I’m studying economics, those competitions were more about macroeconomics problems or how to analyze the company. I am a very competitive person, so whenever I see whatever type of case competition or challenge, I’m always participating. I think that’s wonderful.

I really hope I can bring the macroeconomics perspective to this competition. I think the risk analysis might be really cool for me, and the pricing strategies as well, because that’s what we are doing in our classes.

Emma Xue

I’m in my second year, doing a double major in Economics and HR, so I have some experience with case analysis, but this is my first-ever case competition.

I’ve already done some risk analysis roles. This last year, I was director of member conduct for my sorority and I handled a lot of cases, hands-on. That got me really interested and then I wanted to see if I could apply it to a more formal setting.

What interests me about insurance? I think just finding different alternative solutions. For example, for me, it was parametric information. Ryan actually brought up the idea. It’s really interesting, because there’s just so different ways, especially with technology changing, to analyze risk.  I just want to see what’s new.