GAUSS Prize to Bladt & Steffensen for outstanding work
Mogens Bladt and Mogens Steffensen from the University of Copenhagen, and Søren Asmussen from the University of Aarhus, have won the Gauss Prize for their article “Matrix representations of life insurance payments”.
The German Society for Insurance and Financial Mathematics (DGVFM) and The German Association of Actuaries (DAV) have awarded the renowned GAUSS Prize for outstanding scientific work in insurance and financial mathematics. The high-ranking committee of experts from science and practice awards the prizes for specialist work that bridges the gap between scientific quality and high practical relevance.
The main prize is awarded for the best publication in the internationally renowned science magazine “Europea Actuarial Journal”. This year's main prize (endowed with 3,000 euros) was awarded to Mogens Bladt and Mogens Steffensen from the University of Copenhagen, and Søren Asmussen from the University of Aarhus, for their submission “Matrix representations of life insurance payments”.
“The work introduces a new and very general approach to calculating the reserves of a life insurance policy. With the help of matrix methods, the authors succeed in establishing a framework in which numerous situations that arise in the evaluation, reserving and management of health, pension and life insurance products can be taken into account. The method can be implemented efficiently and allows additional new interpretations of the reserve components,” said the jury.
DAV and DGVFM
The German Association of Actuaries (Deutsche Aktuarvereinigung e.V., DAV) is the professional representation of all actuaries in Germany with more than 5,300 members. The German Society for Insurance and Financial Mathematics (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Versicherungs- und Finanzmathematik e.V., DGVFM) is the scientific partner organisation of DAV with approximately 5,200 individual and 70 institutional members.
To support and motivate especially scientists and young actuaries to investigate open actuarial questions, the DGVFM and DAV have established the annual Gauss Prize in 1998. The aim is to build bridges between actuarial science and the insurance and finance industry.
Mogens Bladt, Professor of applied probability and insurance mathematics at the UCPH since 2018. He graduated as a statistician from the University of Aarhus in 1991 and received his PhD from Aalborg University in 1993. He then moved to the Institute for Applied Mathematics at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).
Mogens Steffensen, Professor of Life Insurance Mathematics, Department of Mathematical Sciences, the University of Copenhagen since 2008. Head of the Insurance and Economics Section.
Søren Asmussen, Professor emeritus at Aarhus University, Department of Mathematics.