Rachid Belhachemi

Assistant Professor

Reilly Hall 330
Le Moyne College
1419 Salt Springs Road
Syracuse, NY 13214


PHONE:

(315) 445-4370


EMAIL


Director, Actuarial Science program

Academic and Professional Background

Dr. Belhachemi completed his MSc. in Statistics from the University of Toronto and did his PhD work in Mathematics at Oklahoma State University. He joins us from University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) where he taught mathematics and actuarial mathematics, and prior to joining Pitt, was the Director of the MSc Program in Financial Mathematics at Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University. He has extensive experience in teaching actuarial science and statistics courses.

Teaching Interests

  • Actuarial Mathematics: Probability (SOA Exam P), Financial Mathematics (SOA Exam FM), Investment and Financial Markets (SOA Exam IFM), Short Term Actuarial Mathematics (SOA Exam STAM), Long Term Actuarial Mathematics (SOA Exam LTAM), Predictive Analytics (SOA Exam PA).
  • Mathematics: Business Mathematics, Calculus I, II, III, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra.
  • Statistics: Mathematical Statistics. Regression Analysis, Time Series Analysis, Bayesian Inference.
  • Financial Mathematics: Stochastic Calculus, Financial Mathematics, Measure Theoretic Probability.

Research Interests
In the United States, the lack of funding for retirement and pension plans has created significant financial problems in several states. In fact, financial professionals and politicians have referred to the underfunded United States pension program as a “crisis.” An article published in Forbes explains that approximately half of the states in this country have “pensions that are 70% funded or much worse. The states can’t borrow or sell bonds to China. In four or five years, some of those states will likely have to either cut their services (the equivalent of a state bailout) or they will need a federal bailout.” Additionally, and in many cases, retirees have no savings and the lack of financial understanding/employer sponsored retirement plans can cost a single state billions of dollars. As MSN reports, “10,000 Americans turn 65 every day – more and more relying on pension benefits as their main source of income.” The report continues that “mismanagement of the funds at the state and local levels as well as market volatility, however, may put pension benefits at risk for many workers entering retirement in the near future.” As the “baby boomer” generation hits retirement age, this “crisis” continues to worsen, with the smallest pension funding gap (i.e., the difference between a state’s pension assets and its retirement benefits obligation) sitting at $335 million. Dr. Belhachemi’s work with respect to pension systems explores few actuarial stochastic models for projecting the shape and structure of underfunded and failing pension and retirement plans in the US.

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