APRA announces scholarship recipients

09.19

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) today announced four recipients of the 2009 Brian Gray Scholarship to study topics in the financial sector.

The 2009 recipients are:

• Michael Scott Donald - University of New South Wales, Faculty of Law, PhD;
• Andrew Ngai - University of New South Wales, Bachelor of Commerce (Honours)/Bachelor of Science;
• Luke Nichols - Macquarie University, Bachelor of Commerce (Honours); and
• Florian Weltewitz - University of Queensland, Bachelor of Economics (Honours)/Bachelor of Business Management.

The Brian Gray Scholarship program was established by APRA and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in September 2002 in memory of Brian Gray, APRA's former Executive General Manager, Policy Research and Consulting. Mr Gray spent more than two decades shaping regulatory policy for the graduate staff in his role at the RBA and later at APRA.

The four recipients of the 2009 scholarships displayed a blend of excellent academic results and a strong interest in issues relevant to financial institutions. Under the terms of the scholarship program, they will be required to devote a substantial amount of time to an agreed research topic.

Topics for this year's scholarship program are:

• Does trust law provide an appropriate foundation for governing superannuation? - Michael Scott Donald;
• An analysis of pricing and risk management aspects of products that insure against longevity risk - Andrew Ngai;
• Multimodel inference for reserving - Luke Nichols; and
• A model of the behaviour of interbank markets under asymmetric information - Florian Weltewitz

The Brian Gray Scholarship program is open to Australian and New Zealand citizens and permanent residents who are currently studying a topic of relevance to prudential regulation. While the program focuses on honours year students, postgraduate students can also apply. The scholarships are valued at $12,500 each.

More information on the Brian Gray Scholarship is available on APRA's website.