Actuarial courses have long been offered in the Department of Mathematics at UGM, which at that time was known as the Mathematics Division. The first such course was Introduction to Life Insurance. This course became the forerunner for the subsequent development of Introduction to Actuarial Mathematics. The next actuarial course offered was Risk Theory, which in its early years was covered as a topic within the course Selected Topics in Applied Mathematics. The development of actuarial courses accelerated significantly in 2006, when the Master’s Program in Mathematics introduced actuarial science as one of its areas of specialization. At that time, actuarial science was included under the insurance specialization. With the establishment of this specialization, more actuarial courses began to be offered, such as Actuarial Mathematics, Construction of Mortality Tables, Actuarial Statistical Methods, Risk Theory, and others.
In 2007, the Department of Mathematics at UGM began collaborating with the Society of Actuaries of Indonesia (PAI)in actuarial education and research. In education, the collaboration focused primarily on the alignment of courses offered by the Department of Mathematics with the certification examinations administered by PAI. As a result, students who had completed certain courses and met specific requirements could obtain particular competency certificates from PAI. To date, there are 15 undergraduate courses and 7 master’s-level courses that can be aligned with PAI examinations.
Research in actuarial science has been developed since the 2000s in the form of master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral research, in collaboration with PAI as well as companies and institutions engaged in insurance and risk management. The areas of research undertaken so far include health insurance, mortality models, insurance product valuation, unit-linked products, pension funds, and general insurance. Collaboration with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) and PAI was also carried out from 2014 to 2016 as part of the OJK program “Producing 1,000 Actuaries”, which aimed to meet the growing demand for actuarial professionals in Indonesia. In relation to this OJK program, on 15 January 2016, during the Annual Meeting of the Financial Services Authority with Leaders of the Financial Services Industry 2016 (Financial Executive Gathering) attended by President Joko Widodo at the State Palace, UGM received an award from the Government of the Republic of Indonesia as the university that had been the most active in supporting the 1,000 Actuaries Program.