I’m on a course at the moment. Learning about economic capital and Basel II. Surprisingly, I am enjoying it more than I thought I would. It’s run by a former senior banker, with a physics background, who, while he is very senior, can’t let go of the fact that he understands the mathematics of risk management.
So he’s stuffed what was supposed to be a course helping reasonably senior people understand economic capital full of mathematics. I don’t think it’s because he wants to show off. I think it’s because he loves it.
I became an actuary because I really loved maths. But it’s probably been ten years since I’ve had to do any serious maths. I usually don’t have the patience for it, and really I should get someone more junior to do it who did it more recently at university anyway.
But right now, I’m revelling in the fact that I can only just keep up with him, but I can, and I’m being forced to think with a part of my brain that I’ve forgotten that I enjoy using.