An actuarial science lecturer from Queens University Belfast has received a Lloyds of London Fulbright Scholar Award to enable him to research at Arizona State University in the US.
An actuarial science lecturer from Queen's University Belfast has received a Lloyd's of London Fulbright Scholar Award to enable him to research at Arizona State University in the US.
Dr Mark Farrell has been selected as a participant in one of the world's most prestigious and selective scholarship programmes to research the impact of wearable technology on insurance business models and, in particular, on the pricing of insurance premiums.
Mark and the other 44 British grantees of the 2017-18 Fulbright cohort celebrated their success at a reception hosted by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London on 6 July.
The Fulbright scholarship was founded by US senator J William Fulbright in 1946, and alumni from the programme include 43 Nobel Prize winners, 28 heads of state/government, 11 US congress personnel, 78 Pulitzer Prize winners and one UN secretary-general.
After training and practising as a pensions actuary in the UK, Ireland and Canada, Mark moved into academia at Queen's University Belfast, where he is a senior lecturer and programme director of actuarial science.
He said: "I'm delighted to have received this prestigious award and excited about carrying out this research. We increasingly have access to self-quantified behavioural and biometric information on our health. This information has tremendous implications for health insurers, in particular, who can potentially not only improve their pricing and underwriting practices but also engage better with customers."