Siu Yu LEUNG

BSc in Risk Management Science
Hang Seng Bank

I worked as an intern at the Retail Portfolio Management Department in Hang Seng Bank for the past year. During my internship, I completed various assignments and gained invaluable experience.

During the year, I wrote different kinds of monthly reports and performed ad-hoc tasks. As I worked in the Retail Portfolio Management Department, most of my work was related to retail products, such as credit cards, personal loans and mortgages. For example, I monitored the monthly card authorisation rate to detect if there were any sharp rises or drops in the approval rate. I also analysed weekly bankruptcy cases, trying to identify some characteristics of or patterns across these customers. Also, I investigated merchants for fraud aimed at swindling money from customers and banks.

From these assignments, I now understand much more about retail credit risks. For example, there were a large variety of retail products. Each product had different properties and required different measures to manage their risk. Moreover, my programming and computer skills improved a lot with my colleagues’ instructions and repeated practice.

Apart from learning hard skills, I also gained many soft skills. First, teamwork was vital in the office and the division of labour was always necessary for greater efficiency. Furthermore, time management was important as there was always more than one task to accomplish and prioritisation was essential.

Overall, this internship was a rewarding experience to learn, and to connect study and work. So, do not miss the chance if you have the opportunity to work as an intern!

Chung Tin KOO

BSc in Risk Management Science
McGill University, Canada

It has been a wonderful experience for me to participate in the exchange programme at McGill University. I have participated in plenty of exchange activities. During the first week of arrival, McGill University provided some orientation activities for exchange students. The most valuable one was an orientation brunch. It was an event that offers a free meal and enabled exchange students to meet each other.

There were some courses that I think it is worth taking at McGill University. I took a mathematical finance course during my studies. It was a course that reviewed basic concepts of derivative pricing, and then get into the introduction of measure and probability theory, and also some more advanced discrete and continuous time mathematical models with applications in option pricing. In other words, it was like an elementary version of the stochastic calculus course offered by the CUHK RMSC programme. I was able to grab some basic stuff on this topic so that it will benefit my studies in the future. I found that the lessons in McGill and CUHK are quite different. The professor did not upload any lecture notes on the platform. Instead, he just wrote the notes on the blackboard to let students copy them. This can greatly encourage students to attend lessons. It would be hard to catch up if someone try to skip lessons.

In addition, the exchange programme benefits much on my personal growth. I have tried a lot of new stuff. For staying abroad, cooking dishes oneself is common. It means that was a chance for me to learn cooking. At first, I started up with some basic dishes like a simple spaghetti mixing with prepared pasta sauce. When I get used to it, I found cooking was fun and relaxing. Then I tried to cook some more advanced cuisines like lasagna and rib-eye steak. It was nice to build up a new hobby during this period. And I have traveled to many places to explore around the world. Opportunities were given to me to obtain some once in a lifetime experiences, like watching an NBA playoff semi-final in Toronto.

Moreover, the exchange programme provided me new inspirations towards my life and future goals. It was a precious opportunity for me to study abroad for one semester, to try something new or cannot happen in Hong Kong. I truly believe that one should treasure the opportunity when they are given a chance to do something different.