September 29, 2020 - Professor David Saunders (University of Waterloo) has been selected to serve as the Director of the Fields Institute Centre for Financial Industries (CFI). Professor Saunders succeeds Professor Matheus Grasseli (McMaster University), who will continue to serve on the CFI’s Steering Committee.

Professor Saunder’s research interests include the application of stochastic optimization to finance, the use of dual variables from optimal portfolio problems for pricing derivative securities, development of an asset-liability management model for complicated insurance products with embedded options and guarantee provisions; the behaviour of optimal credit portfolios in the "large portfolio" regime that serves as the foundation for current credit risk regulations; efficient computation of optimal portfolios when returns have a Gaussian mixture distribution; and fast algorithms for portfolio optimization using the Omega performance measure.

Created in 2015, the Centre for Financial Industries is the focal point for these activities, providing visibility for the expertise of its members, facilitating corporate collaboration and enabling rapid mobilization of resources. The individual membership is drawn from a vibrant community of faculty and postdoctoral fellows from the Institute's Principal Sponsoring Universities, practitioners from the local financial industry, as well as Canadian and international scientists with close ties to the Institute.

The Centre provides unique benefits for Corporate Members, including proposing and organizing scientific activities at the Institute with exclusive access to the results; participation in the Centre's working groups, roundtables, webinars and seminars; recruitment opportunities; and networking opportunities among the corporate membership. Centre corporate partners also receive Corporate Membership in the Institute and its Industrial Advisory Board.