Roya Rahnejat works in the City as a graduate risk analyst for Aspen Re, a commercial insurer and re-insurer specialising in marine and energy insurance. Six months ago she graduated with a masters in risk management and financial engineering from Tanaka Business School in London.

Tanaka’s specialist masters is in its third year; Rahnejat (pictured) was one of its first students. A graduate in maths and management from Imperial College, she likes the fact that her specialism is a new growth area. “Risk management in insurance is not as developed as it is in banking, but we’re catching up. I work in a team of five on credit and underwriting risk.”

Insurance is a relatively new subject for business schools and a wave of new and revamped postgraduate qualifications coincides with the industry’s shift away from traditional in-house training towards becoming an all-graduate profession. As careers in banking suffer from the credit crunch, two thirds of Tanaka’s risk-management masters students are moving into insurance.

The academic emphasis on risk management is timely. With increased global competition and uncertainty in the money markets, insurance companies are resorting to increasingly complex financial instruments to offset the risks that they take on.

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Dr Paolo Zaffaroni, the programme director for Tanaka’s risk-management masters, says: “We offer a very specialised programme for people who want to get practical experience. It’s a combination of maths and computing and students mostly move on to become quantitative analysts.”

Rahnejat will qualify in two years’ time. Meanwhile, she is delighted that her qualification gave her the background in insurance that enabled her to hit the ground running. “It’s like spotting a gap and taking it. Now is a good time to move into insurance,” she says.

Surrey University Business School has introduced a masters in life assurance that is recognised by the CII, and Newcastle Business School has a global financial management masters with a financial risk assessment slant. Cass Business School offers masters programmes in insurance and risk management and actuarial science. Christopher Parsons, Professor in Insurance at Cass, says: “Our MSc in insurance and risk management takes a holistic view. Insurance \ one way of managing risk. We are particularly interested in the interface of the insurance and the capital markets and the tendency now to securitise insurance risk through bonds and derivatives.” Cass is geared to the needs of City firms and the London insurance market. Each year 50 to 60 full-time students and 10 to 15 part-timers take Cass masters.

Professor Parsons says that a salary of about £30,000 is the going rate for a graduate trainee with a big international broker, while postgraduates with relevant managerial experience earn almost double that. “Insurance companies are very keen to compete for the best people and in London they are prepared to pay,” he says.

Risk management is starting to loom large in MBAs too. Manchester Business School (MBS) has added financial risk management to its list of electives. Simon French, a professor of information and decision science who teaches on the new subject, is involved in a research project to assess risk from the UK’s next generation of nuclear power stations.

A high proportion of MBS alumni go into financial services and a small but growing number will be attracted by insurance. “Running a large global organisation involves managing risk across the organisation,” Professor French says.

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