Jaren

I'm a qualified actuary based in the APAC region, with 15 years of experience in risk consulting across Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and a handful of other markets. Most of my work has been in insurance and financial services — helping organisations understand, model, and manage risk.

A few years ago I started getting seriously interested in machine learning. Not because it was fashionable, but because I kept running into problems where traditional actuarial methods were clearly leaving something on the table. I've been building models, reading papers, and generally making a mess of things ever since — in a productive way, I think.

What I work on

Professionally, I consult on risk strategy and framework development. That usually means working with risk teams to build models and processes that actually get used, rather than ones that sit in a drawer. I also spend time on regulatory and compliance work, particularly around climate risk and ESG — both of which are becoming genuinely load-bearing in the APAC market.

On the side, I'm always running some kind of ML experiment. Current interests are around ensemble methods for insurance pricing and using language models to make sense of unstructured claims data. I write about this when I have something worth saying.

Outside work

I'm a sports enthusiast — I'll watch or play most things, but football is the main one. I'm also a dad, which has given me a very different perspective on uncertainty and risk than any textbook ever did.

I also build LEGO occasionally, which is either a personality trait or a coping mechanism, I haven't decided which.

This site

I write here about risk management, AI engineering, and the intersection of the two. There's no particular posting schedule — I write when I have something worth sharing. If you want to follow along, the best way is probably via X.