As a child among the “one child policy” generation, my family and along with close to 300 million rapid aging Chinese families are currently experiencing later retirement age and reduced pension payment due to emerging pension fund short fall close to 600 billion Chinese yuan. This significant risk is cause by policy failure of baby boom under Mao Zedong following with 36 years of “one child policy”, premature insurance industry that lacks of commercial pension plan, and failed liabilities management framework to anticipate the problem of social security and well-being. I see significant necessities to have pension reform to build private pension plan better support current insufficient public pension fund and bring financial securities to elderly population in the future. As an actuary working in an insurance company, an institution focusing on social responsibilities to protect financial, life and social securities against future risks. I believe myself would bring my expertise to improve the well-being of millions of elderly Chinese people.
With the vision of future pension opportunities in China and mission to minimize the risk of social security benefit tumble, my long term goal is to become a senior executive leads all aspects of the pension business including product development and management, marketing, strategy, and research and analytics in a Chinese insurance company, or create my own pension fund that directly brings benefits to millions of Chinese families.
To achieve my long term goal, I have been working in actuarial field for five years, but I do see me lack of established managerial knowledge and experience exposure. My short term plan to eventually meet my ultimate goal is that after graduating from Columbia to continue work in insurance industry by focusing on retirement product design, marketing, strategy, and operation. This goal will not only leverage my obtained actuarial expertise, but also utilize managerial knowledge learnt from Columbia to equip me with effective leadership confidence for any future challenges.
While my actuarial experience is a solid foundation for my future goal, a MBA education from Columbia is a must for me to build business and entrepreneurial acumen, negotiation and managerial skill, leadership ability, and exclusive prestige network to achieve my long term goal. Especially, no other esteem MBA program provides so many unique managerial classes as what Columbia does. My assertion is reaffirmed by Pierce Wang, an alumni of CBS, who told me there is no other MBA program provides in depth and practical courses as Columbia does. This most impressive managerial class he has ever experienced was the managerial negotiations from professor Malia Mason. She not only taught the conceptual ideas and principals of negotiations, but also experiment different techniques through roll play workshop to fix body language, posture, and speaking tone, to better prepare students for the future needs at bargaining table. I am also very interested in professor William Duggan’s Napoleon’s glance course, a course that is different from other technical or analytical tool class which you may have in other MBA program, but teaches the art and intuition of strategic management creating a mindset of a true leader.
I am certain that my actuarial background and insurance experience would bring special perspectives to Columbia class of 2019. Columbia would also flourish me through professional and personal development to meet my ultimate goal and bring an impact to the world.
