Graduates may fill the following professional roles and relative functions in the listed fields of employment:
1) Financial Engineering specialist
Functions:
a. Designs both traditional (shares, bonds), modern (derivatives), and collective investment and savings products (funds, patrimonial management)
b. Is able to divide the products in the replicating portfolio and make a (fair value) evaluation, also considering the degree of product liquidity
(e.g. Over-the-Counter products)
c. Is able to assess the impact of different structuring choices (using for example exotic products) on product value
d. Applies the financial engineering categories to evaluate financial statement entries (applying for example real option techniques)
Career opportunities:
o Financial or insurance brokers or Consulting and auditing firms
o Research centres.
o Supervisory authorities
o Regulatory authorities or Banking groups
2) Risk manager
Functions:
a. Divides both traditional and modern financial products (structured products and derivatives) exposed to different risk factors (risk mapping);
b. Develops and applies risk measuring techniques and reports to the involved organisations, including financial intermediaries (as a whole or as a business unit), non-financial companies and single clients;
c. Designs static and dynamic risk coverage strategies and techniques to measure the effectiveness of such coverage in order to orient choices
d. Designs simulation techniques and stress test analyses of risk management systems under extreme conditions.
Career opportunities:
o Financial or insurance brokers or Consulting and auditing firms
o Supervisory authorities
o Non financial companies with financial management
3) Asset manager
Functions:
a. Designs quantitative strategies to choose investments, and prepares passive and active portfolio management techniques based on both stock-picking and market-timing;
b. Uses the most common Bayesian techniques to merge different sources of information, from historical series to implicit derivative prices and that provided by analysts;
c. Designs products with guarantees capital or return and develops the relative asset-liability management (ALM) techniques;
d. Designs dynamic long-term portfolio management techniques, to manage pension funds and life insurance policies;
e. Designs exchange risk coverage techniques and generally the use of derivatives to improve passive replication of an index or the risk-return features of a long-only portfolio.
Career opportunities:
o Financial asset management company, insurance brokers or independent consulting firm
o Supervisory authorities
o Private equity company or Family office
4) Insurance specialist
Functions:
a. Designs products for risk transfer for both individual and collective clients and assesses the prospects of a loss from a probability point of view;
b. Assesses policies, divides financial and actuarial risk factors and draws up coverage strategies (for example using longevity bonds);
c. Studies and applies statistical models to forecast changes in the probability of survival and risks linked to life portfolios (longevity risk);
d. Studies insurance techniques for catastrophic events and related risk management and coverage strategies both through the purchase of market protection (cat options) and re-insurance from other insurance brokers.
Career opportunities:
o Insurance companies and brokers
o Pension fund and life insurance policy management companies and consulting firms
o Supervisory authorities
