APRA announces 2015 Brian Gray Scholarship recipients

15.21

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) today announced the three recipients of the 2015 Brian Gray Scholarship to study topics in the financial sector.

The Brian Gray Scholarship program was established by APRA and the Reserve Bank of Australia in September 2002 in memory of Brian Gray, APRA's former Executive General Manager, Policy Research and Consulting, who spent more than two decades shaping regulatory policy in the financial area in his roles at the RBA and APRA. The scholarships are valued at $15,000 each.

The recipients of the 2015 scholarship are:

• Alan Liang Xian — Honours candidate, Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) in Actuarial Studies/Bachelor of Science in Statistics, University of New South Wales;
• Gabriela Araujo — Honours candidate, Bachelor of Commerce (Finance)/Bachelor of Economics (Honours), University of Queensland; and
• Natalie Xiaowen Peng — PhD candidate (Accounting), University of Queensland.

Under this Scholarship program, the recipients will devote a substantial amount of time to an agreed research topic and present their findings to APRA upon completion of their research. The scholarship recipients will be researching the following topics:

• Individual claim liability analysis in general insurance using Markov-modulated Poisson processes — Alan Liang Xian;
• Stability of a complex financial network in the presence of bank failure — Gabriela Araujo; and
• Determinants of Superannuation Fund Family Choice in Australia — Natalie Xiaowen Peng.

The 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.

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