The two German actuarial associations Deutsche Gesellschaft für Versicherungs- und Finanzmathematik e.V. (DGVFM) and the Deutsche Aktuarvereinigung e.V. (DAV) once again awarded the prestigious GAUSS Prize along with two GAUSS Young Researcher Prizes for outstanding academic work. The awards recognize contributions that combine high scientific quality with strong practical relevance in the field of financial and actuarial mathematics.
The main prize (endowed with 3,000 euros) goes to Nicolas Camenzind and Prof. Dr Damir Filipović for their paper “Stripping the Swiss discount curve using kernel ridge regression”, published in the European Actuarial Journal. The work makes an innovative contribution to the modelling of discount curves in Switzerland and combines advanced machine learning techniques with actuarial methodology. “The paper is a textbook example of combining mathematical precision in presenting the underlying theory with a deep understanding of the practical calibration problem of the Swiss interest rate curve,” emphasized Prof. Dr Ralf Korn, at the time still Chairman of the Board of DGVFM. “At the same time, it impressively demonstrates the advantage of using the machine learning method of ridge regression over a simple linear regression.”
Dr Yusha Chen from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz has been awarded one of this year’s two GAUSS Prizes for Young Academics for her dissertation “Life Insurance Companies: Product Design, Marketing, and Investment.“ In her research, she analyses key aspects of product design and capital investment for life insurance companies and provides valuable impetus for strategic corporate management. “The work consists of several papers already published in high-ranking journals,” explains the prize committee. “It impressively examines various innovative aspects of pension product design, from the inclusion of long-term care risk cover to the use of ESG investments and tontines instead of annuities.”
Markus Maier from the Technical University of Munich was awarded the second of this year’s two GAUSS Prizes for Young Academics for his Master’s thesis “Parametric cyber insurance and its potential to close the cyber protection gap.“ His work highlights the increasing importance of cyber insurance and examines the potential of parametric products to close existing insurance gaps. “The problem is of enormous importance and has hardly been addressed in the scientific literature to date,” says the prize committee. “The mathematics required for this has only been developed in other contexts in recent years but is new in this application.”
All three award-winning works were presented at the DGVFM General Meeting on May 12, 2025 in short presentations, the recordings of which are now available to all actuview users in the channel of DAV and DGVFM.
