by Joy Kendi
The Actuarial Students’ Society of Kenya (ASSK) held their first physical event of the year 2023/2024 on Friday 17th November 2023 at Kabarak University, Nakuru. The Product Development Competition is an embodiment of everything innovative and sets the stage for the brightest minds to showcase their talents and innovations to a panel of judges who have the hardest task of choosing the best product and best research papers. The universities in attendance were: Moi, Egerton, Kisii and Kabarak.
The PDC was celebrated as an eye opener to many of whom had never participated. The growth and resilience the PDC offers to students remains detrimental to the survival and encouragement of the Actuarial profession. Ideas ranging from Automated Pension Statements (Kabarak), Education Insurance Redefined (Moi) and University Federal Employment Agency (Moi) took centre stage as the best products that were presented. The panelists judged them by the criterion of feasibility, knowledge-ability and presentation skills. The intensity of the competition was at a dangerous level, with close calls between scores, but all in all we had our winners proceeding to the National PDC in July 2024.
The best research papers: An Analysis of NSSF as a Long-Term Pension Plan for Sustainability (Kabarak), Quantifying Extreme Value Probabilities of Claim Severity using Gamma Mixtures (Kisii), and Gumbel Copula Mortality Dependence Modelling (Kisii), took to the crowd as they suggested means by which they could develop and redesign the world in their specific areas of research.
The success of the Western Region PDC heavily relies on the collaboration between campuses, the innovative nature and commitment to success by the Actuarial students in that region. The ideas shared, the connections made, the anticipation of a grueling and auspicious event, made all the ingenious innovations reign in the minds of participants even after the event.