(ref. BAP-2026-360)
Laatst aangepast: 11/06/26
The Department of Accounting, Finance and Insurance offers a dynamic, stimulating and pleasant working environment. Moreover, AFI enjoys a strong international reputation and is part of a wide network consisting of other universities, companies and institutions.
LRisk is the KU Leuven center for insurance and financial risk analysis, acting at the forefront of the international research community in the field of actuarial science, financial engineering and risk management for financial institutions.
The insurance industry faces fundamental changes that will not be tackled by incremental improvements of existing techniques, but call for entirely new insurance pricing paradigms. The dynamics of emerging risks such as cyber and weather related risks need to be handled with little or no past data. At the same time, for more traditional covers the wealth of data that is collected now presents new challenges (e.g., computational or ethical) and opportunities (e.g., statistical power).
Differential pricing is a foundation of modern-day insurance and deals with the actuarial valuation of risk by calculating a fair price for a new policy sold to a given risk profile. The so-called best estimate price is calculated as the ‘expected frequency times expected impact’ of the insured event resulting from standard regression models (the generalized linear models, or GLMs) for claims data. These predictive models are key in a business that is highly regulated, strongly valuing the explainability of the algorithms driving decisions with impact on customers.
After selling a contract to a client, the insurer is liable for the claims arising from this contract. Capital must be held to meet these future liabilities. Calculating the necessary amount of capital is the job of a reserving actuary. Even though these key actuarial tasks are treated in silos in current insurance practice and literature, reserving is the mere continuation of pricing. Whereas pricing happens at the onset of the insurance policy – before any coverage has been provided – reserving is, in some way, an updated pricing of the insurance policy. The pricing actuary values the total loss on a policy from ground-up, while the reserving actuary assesses the total loss in the presence of some (though incomplete) information on the development of occurred claims.
As such, we will design dynamic, responsive and resilient pricing and reserving techniques for traditional but also emerging risk types, including machine learning methods that balance predictive value and acceptability by major stakeholders (e.g. explainable to management, discrimination-free pricing). Access to real data and strong links with practice will ensure applicability and relevance of our developments.
We are looking for a highly motivated, enthusiastic, communicative, and eager-to-learn researcher with a passion for actuarial science, statistics, probability theory and analytics.
Specific qualifications:
- Holder of a Master's degree in mathematics, actuarial science, statistics, engineering, or another related, quantitative field, with
excellent grades.
- Interested in programming and computational work
Full-time employment in an international context with a competitive salary/scholarship. You will join the doctoral school of the Faculty of Economics and Business of KU Leuven. Funding is available for 4 years. You will join the Insurance research group which is part of the LRisk research center of KU Leuven. See the website of the center for more information. The main focus is on research but you will provide occasional support in the teaching and administrative activities of the group.
Detailed information about the program, including admission requirements and placement records, can be found at https://feb.kuleuven.be/ research/PhD/businesseconomics/Business
The Department of Accounting, Finance & Insurance offers a dynamic, stimulating and pleasant working environment. The student will be part of the Research Group Finance, which enjoys a strong international reputation and is part of a wide network consisting of other universities, companies and institutions.
Doctoral Program in Business Economics
Homepage of AFI
For more information please contact Prof. dr. Katrien Antonio, mail:
[email protected].
You can apply for this job no later than June 25, 2026 via the online application tool
KU Leuven strives for an inclusive, respectful and socially safe environment. We embrace diversity among individuals and groups as an asset. Open dialogue and differences in perspective are essential for an ambitious research and educational environment. In our commitment to equal opportunity, we recognize the consequences of historical inequalities. We do not accept any form of discrimination based on, but not limited to, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, ethnic or national background, skin colour, religious and philosophical diversity, neurodivergence, employment disability, health, or socioeconomic status. For questions about accessibility or support offered, we are happy to assist you at this email address.
Heb je een vraag over de online sollicitatieprocedure? Raadpleeg onze veelgestelde vragen of stuur een e-mail naar [email protected]
av_timer Tewerkstellingspercentage: Voltijds
location_city Locatie: Leuven
timer Solliciteren tot en met:
25/06/2026 23:59 CET
bookmarks Tags: Bedrijfswetenschappen
