Developments in Pension Design and Investment Modelling 2026
Andros, September 6-9, 2026
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This is the third edition of the workshop ‘Developments in Pension Design and Investment Modelling’, organized by Michalis Anthropelos (University of Piraeus), Pierre Devolder (UCLouvain) and Steven Vanduffel (Vrije Universiteit Brussel).
The workshop aims to highlight recent developments in the field of pension fund design, with a particular emphasis on related investment strategies from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
While it primarily targets an academic audience, participation from industry professionals—including asset managers, actuaries, and risk professionals—is highly encouraged. To stimulate interaction and discussion, we are limiting attendance to a maximum of twenty participants. This will ensure ample opportunities for engagement beyond the scheduled presentations.
The first edition took place in Piraeus on Sept 2024 and details are available here.
The second edition took place in Andros on Sept 2025 and details are available here.
Venue
September 6-9
Aneroussa Beach Hotel
Andros, Greece
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Aneroussa is a beautiful hotel in Andros located between two dreamy sandy beaches with crystal clear waters, Delavogia and Ag. Marina. Built, owned, and run by three architects, with the help of an experienced and friendly staff, Aneroussa Hotel Andros opened its doors in 1985 and since then it has been offering impeccable services to its guests.
Invited Speakers
Chris Bakas
State Street
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Christos Bakas is a seasoned financial professional with extensive experience in investment strategy and consulting. Currently serving as a Senior Retirement Investment Strategist at State Street Global Advisors since November 2021, Christos has previously held significant roles including Associate Director and DC Investment Consultant at Punter Southall Aspire from April 2017 to November 2021. Prior experience includes positions as a DC Investment Consultant at Capita Employee Benefits, Fund Analyst at Friends Life UK, and Fixed Income Analyst at Payden & Rygel. Christos also undertook internships at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Societe Generale Private Banking. Academic credentials include a Master of Science in Finance from EDHEC Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Economic and Regional Development from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences.
Carole Bernard
Grenoble Ecole de Management
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Professor of Finance.
Carole Bernard was with the Statistics and Actuarial Science department at the University of Waterloo from September 2006 to December 2014.
Carole graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan ( France). She obtained her Ph.D. in Finance from ISFA (Institute of Financial and Actuarial Sciences) in Lyon (France) in 2005 on the subject of “Valuation of Guarantees in Insurance and in Finance using the Option Theory”.
Wing Fung (Alfred) Chong
The University of Hong Kong (HKU)
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I am an Associate Professor, on Tenure-Track, in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science within the School of Computing and Data Science at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). I am also an Associate of the Society of Actuaries (SOA).
My research areas are Actuarial Science, Financial Mathematics, and Quantitative Risk Management, with broad research directions, that include risk sharing and pooling, forward preferences and control strategies, life and retirement products, risk aggregation and resource allocation, artificial intelligence in insurance, as well as mitigating emerging and large-scale risks, recently focusing on cyber, pandemic, and weather-related risks. In general, I am interested in solving any timely and revolutionary decision-making problems, via data analytics, machine learning, optimization, and stochastic control. I received the 2025 Bob Alting von Geusau Prize, the SOA Actuarial Science Early Career Research Award in 2025, the Michael V. Colla Prize for Mathematics Related to Medicine from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2022, and the Best of 2020 in the Annual Meeting of the Casualty Actuarial Society.
Prior to the current position at HKU, in 2021-2025, I was an Associate Professor in the Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics at Heriot-Watt University; in 2018-2021, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Statistics at UIUC, where I co-founded the Illinois Risk Lab; in 2017-2018, I was a J. L. Doob Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at UIUC.
I was born and raised in Hong Kong, with the legally given name Wing Fung Chong (莊榮峰). I am also known as Alfred Chong, but I have been using my legally given name, Wing Fung Chong, for publication purposes. I hold a Ph.D. in Actuarial Science from HKU and King’s College London, under the supervisions of Ka Chun Cheung and Gechun Liang.
Merce Claramunt
Universitat de Barcelona
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PhD in Economic and Business Sciences (1992), Universitat de Barcelona
MSc in Business Research Lecturer | PhD in Business Advisor
Runhuan Feng
Tsinghua University
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Feng is currently a Chair Professor in the School of Economics and Management in Tsinghua University. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Mathematics, Statistics and Industrial Engineering,State Farm Companies Foundation Endowed Professor, Director of Actuarial Science and the Founding Director of Predictive Analytics and Risk Management in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States.
Peter Hieber
Université de Lausanne (UNIL), HEC Lausanne,
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Peter Hieber is an associate professor in “Actuarial Science” at the University of Lausanne (HEC Lausanne). Prior to this, he was a DAAD-Prime Fellow at the University of Ulm (Germany) and the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and a professor in “Risk and Insurance” at Technical University of Munich. His research interests are in Insurance Mathematics and Actuarial Science with a focus on Life and Pension Insurance (see here for more details).
He is a qualified actuary (German Actuarial Society (DAV)) and board member of the Swiss Actuarial Society (SAV). More information on his research can be found on [Google Scholar], [SSRN].
Jean Hindriks
UCLouvain
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Jean Hindriks is Head of Economics School of Louvain (2019 – ), full Professor of Economics at UCLouvain (Belgium) and visiting Professor at the College of Europe.
He is a founding member of Itinera Institute (Brussels). He was member of the Belgian Commission for Pension reform 2020-2040 (April 2013 – June 2014). He is the author of the International textbook (with Gareth Myles) “Intermediate Public Economics” (The MIT Press 2013). He is associate editor of the Journal of Public Economic Theory.
The research of Professor Hindriks evolves around taxation, education and pension.
George Lagarias
Forvis Mazars
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George has 20 years of experience in financial markets, 9 in Athens and 11 in London. He has worked for a number of private banks and asset managers, as an investment officer, portfolio and fund manager, economist and investment strategist.
George has helped organisations grow their assets and consistently delivered good outcomes for clients across six major organisations. His proudest achievement, apart from good returns and ideas for clients, is how he has helped teams grow and developed analysts who have moved on, armed with knowledge and experience.
Anne Lavigne
Université d’Orléans
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Anne Lavigne is a professor of economics at the University of Orléans and a specialist in insurance economics and pension systems. She was head of studies at the Conseil d’orientation des retraites between 2016 and 2022.
Frank Riedel
Universität Bielefeld
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Director of the Center for Mathematical Economics
Speaker of the Research Training Group 2865 Coping with Uncertainty in Dynamic Economies
Speaker of the Focus Area QUAMU Quantifying and Managing Uncertainty
Chairman of the Scientific Network AMaMeF
Deputy Speaker of the Collaborative Research Center 1283
Editor in Chief of Mathematics and Financial Economics
Associate Editor of Economic Theory
Jochen Russ
Ulm University
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Jochen Ruß’s consulting work focuses on the development of innovative life insurance products and financial mathematics in the areas of life insurance and the secondary market for life insurance policies.
He is the author of over 100 specialist publications. His research has been recognized with ten research awards in Australia (1997 and 2000), Singapore (1998), and Germany (1999, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2016, and 2018).
Jochen Ruß is also an adjunct professor at the University of Ulm, a lecturer at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, a member of the advisory board of the German Association for Secondary Market Life Insurance Investments, a member of the advisory board of the Munich Risk and Insurance Center, an associate editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, and a reviewer for various scientific journals. He is a member of the German Society for Insurance and Financial Mathematics (DGVFM) and the American Risk and Insurance Association (ARIA).
George Symeonidis
Hellenic Actuarial Authority
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Dr. George Symeonidis is a fully qualified Actuary and a Doctor in Economics of Insurance. He serves as the Vice-Chair & President-Elect of the International Association of Consulting Actuaries (IACA). With nearly two decades of experience in the insurance industry and regulatory authorities, George has honed his expertise at the intersection of technical and managerial skills. He shares his knowledge with future actuaries through university lectures, focusing on risk management, pension economics, and public finance.
Thaleia Zariphopoulou
University of Texas at Austin
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Thaleia Zariphopoulou is the holder of the Presidential Chair of Mathematics and the V.F. Neuhaus Professorship of Finance at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she was the Laun Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and from 2009-2012, the first holder of the Oxford-Man Chair in Quantitative Finance at the University of Oxford.
Her area of expertise is Financial Mathematics and Stochastic Optimization. She has published extensively in the areas of investments and valuation in incomplete markets, and introduced novel approaches to indifference valuation and dynamic risk preferences.
She has served very actively the community of Financial Mathematics. She sits on the editorial board of eleven academic journals and monograph series, and she is the Editor of the SIAM Series in Financial Mathematics. She has served in various prize committees and panels. She has also been the Vice-Chair (2007-2010) of the SIAG Activity Group in Financial Mathematics and Engineering, and has served as Vice-President (2004-2006) and President (2006-2008) of the Bachelier Finance Society.
In 2012, she was elected SIAM Fellow and in 2014, she was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul.
Chair in Mathematics (Holder) | Hugh Roy Cullen Centennial Chair in Business Administration (Fellow) | Jack G. Taylor Endowment Fund (Fellow) | V. F. Neuhaus Centennial Professorship in Finance (Holder)
Organizers
Michail Anthropelos
Since June 2023, he has been serving as an Associate Professor in Financial Mathematics at the Department of Banking and Financial Management, University of Piraeus. He has a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master from Columbia University and a Bachelor from the University of Piraeus. In the past, he had served as visiting scholar at the LSE and a visiting professor at Boston University.
His research interests lie in the field of Mathematical Finance and more precisely, problems related to optimal and sub-optimal risk-sharing, equilibria in non-competitive financial markets and contingent-claim pricing under price impact.
Pierre Devolder
Pierre Devolder is full professor of quantitative finance and actuarial sciences at the Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences of UCLouvain. He also teaches at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and in Strasbourg, Paris and Rabat. His main research topics include stochastic finance, life insurance and pension theory.
He is founding partner of the consultant actuarial company Reacfin and member of the Belgian Academic Council for pensions (previously commission for pension reform 2020-2040).
Steven Vanduffel
Steven Vanduffel is a professor in Finance, Insurance and Risk Management at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) – Solvay Business School. By training he has MSc degrees in mathematics and actuarial sciences from the KULeuven and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (2005).
His research topics are in the field of insurance and financial mathematics/economics with a current emphasis on designing and implementing real-world pension solutions, risk assessment under uncertainty, estimation of option implied dependence with applications, and the optimal design of insurance portfolios.
Sponsors
