Professor
Heriot-Watt University
Biographical Sketch: Andrew Cairns is Professor of Financial Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and Director of the Actuarial Research Centre: a PhD training centre fully supported by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, industry sponsors and industry PhD supervisors.
He is well known both in the UK and internationally for his research in financial risk management for pension plans and life insurers. Within this field he has developed a new model for bond-price dynamics for use in the measurement and management of long-term interest-rate risks in pensions and life insurance. More recently he has been working on the modelling of longevity risk: how this can be modelled, measured and priced, and how it can be transferred to the financial markets. He has developed a number of new and innovative stochastic mortality models including the CBD model, and in 2013 was the first to conduct a forensic analysis of inaccuracies in UK national mortality data.
He is an active member of the UK and international actuarial profession in both research and education including his role as editor-in-chief of ASTIN Bulletin since 2005. He is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a corresponding member of the Swiss Association of Actuaries.
In 2008 he was awarded the Halmstad Prize for his paper Pricing Death: Frameworks for the Valuation and Securitization of Mortality Risk co-authored with David Blake and Kevin Dowd.