The IFID Centre
Photo: Speakers and staff at the 2010 IFID Conference
The IFID Centre, which is an abbreviation for Individual Finance & Insurance Decisions Centre, is a non-profit research organization founded in the year 2000 and originally incubated at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences.
The current mandate of the IFID Centre is to function as a quasi-endowment or granting organization for research, conferences and presentations in the area of quantitative personal finance and wealth management.
For the past two decades The IFID Centre has organized conferences in which leading scholars in the fields of economics, finance, insurance and actuarial science have presented their cutting-edge research work. Please see the following list of events we have organized and/or sponsored in the past.
Photo: Professor Menahem Yaari (Keynote Speaker)
Previous IFID Conferences
May 22 & May 23, 2025, Amsterdam
Featured speakers
Moshe Milevsky
Andrew J.G. Cairns
Torsten Kleinow
Leonid Gavrilov
Natalia Gavrilova
June 9th, 2022 (virtual). Details here Registration
Speakers:
Preet Banerjee
Dr. Sonya Lutter
Dr. Sebastien Betermier
April 7th & 8th, 2020 – McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business, Ron Joyce Centre, Burlington, ON
Further details TBA
Theme: New Developments in FinTech and Their Impact on the Society
November 6, 2018 – McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business, Ron Joyce Centre, Burlington, ON
Speakers:
Dr. Dan Marom (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The State of Crowdfunding and Its Benefits to the Society
Dr. Julapa Jagtiani (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
The Roles of Alternative Data and AI/ML in Fintech Lending
Dr. Paul Momtaz (UCLA)
The Performance of Initial Coin Offerings
Dr. Dirk Zetzsche (University of Luxembourg)
The Distributed Liability of Distributed Ledgers: Legal Risks of Blockchain
Theme: The Roles of Robo-Advisors in Personal Financial Planning
October 31, 2017 – McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business, Ron Joyce Centre, Burlington, ON
Speakers:
Stephen Foerster (Western University)
Retail Financial Advice
Eric Kirzner (University of Toronto)
The Genesis, Growth, and Features of Robo Advisory Services
Pauline Shum Nolan (York University)
The Business Models of Robo-Advisors, and New FinTech Services
Stephen J. Huxley (University of San Francisco)
The Short-Term Nature of Robo Portfolios
Theme: The Optimal Household Balance Sheet: Who Has Too Much Debt?
Wednesday, October 19, 2016 – McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business, Ron Joyce Centre, Burlington, ON
Speakers:
Guozhong Zhu (University of Alberta) (co-authors: Vyacheslav Mikhed & Barry Scholnickand)
Personal Bankruptcy Over the Lifecycle
Nitzan Tzur-Ilan (Bank of Israel & Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The Effect of Loan-to-Value Limits on the Demand for Housing: The Case of Israel
Phillippe d’Astous (HEC Montreal)
Consumption, Debt, and Delinquency Responses to an Anticipated Increase in Cash-on-Hand
Theme: Tax Efficiency and Retirement Income Planning
Thursday, November 26, 2015 – Fields Institute, Toronto, ON, M5T 3J1
Speakers:
Runhuan Feng (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
The other side of the table: insurer’s modeling of variable annuity guaranteed benefits
Jamie Golombek (CIBC Wealth Advisory Services)
Optimizing Registered Plan Contributions: Is there a right answer anyway?
Huaxiong Huang (Dept of Math & Statistics, York University)
Tax-Efficient Withdrawals, Longevity Risk Aversion and Required Minimum Distributions
Amin Mawani (Schulich, York University)
Tax Efficient Investing
Theme: Financial and Actuarial Implications of Very Old Age
November 27th, 2014 – Fields Institute, Toronto, Ontario
Speakers:
Leonid A. Gavrilov (NORC at the University of Chicago)
Determinants of survival to very old age: Role of familial and life course factors
Natalia S. Gavrilova (NORC at the University of Chicago)
Mortality trajectories at very old ages: Actuarial implications
George Graziani (SVP Head Longevity North America, Swiss Re)
Longevity risk- key trends, issues, and opportunities
Les Mayhew (Cass Business School)
On the decomposition of life expectancy and limits to life and some implications for pensions
Presented by: David Promislow (York University)
Theme: Alternative Annuity Designs
November 28th, 2013 – Fields Institute, Toronto, Ontario
Speakers:
Jorge Miguel Bravo (University of Évora & Nova University of Lisbon)
Sharing longevity risk in life annuity contracts
Catherine Donnelly (Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K.)
The future is not guaranteed: lesser-known relatives of the life annuity
Don Ezra (Principal, Don Ezra Consulting Services)
The Ideal Retirement Annuity: A Personal Perspective
Michael J. Sabin (Independent Consultant, Sunnyvale, CA)
Fair Tontine Annuity
June 14th, 2013 – Fields Institute, Toronto, Ontario
Speakers:
Thomas Post (Maastricht University)
What Makes Investors Optimistic, What Makes Them Afraid?
Moshe Milevsky (York University)
Optimal Retirement Tontines for the 21st Century: With Reference to Mortality Derivatives in 1693
Theme: Withdrawing Money from your Nest Egg
Fields Institute, Toronto, Ontario – November 22nd, 2012
Wade D. Pfau, Director, Macroeconomic Policy Program
Associate Professor, Economics, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS)
An efficient frontier for retirement income
Anthony Webb, Economist, Center for Retirement Research, Boston College
Should households base asset decumulation strategies on required minimum distribution tables?
Marie-Eve Lachance, Associate Professor, Finance, San Diego State University
Roth versus traditional accounts in a life-cycle model with tax risk
Thomas Salisbury, Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, York University
Optimizing variable annuity income (Optimal Initiation of a GLWB in a Variable Annuity: No Arbitrage Approach)
Toronto, Ontario – November 24th, 2011
Mark Kamstra, Schulich School of Business, York University
‘The Annuity Duration Puzzle’
Raimond Maurer, Finance Department, Goethe University Frankfurt
‘Optimal Purchase of Life and Longevity Risk Insurance Products for Retired Couples’
Alessandro Previtero, Richard Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario
‘Stock Market Returns and Annuitization. A Case of Myopic Extrapolation’
Gabriele Stabile, Methods and Models for Economics, Territory and Finance (MEMOTEF), University of Rome
‘Pension Planning and Investments under Transaction Costs’
Keynote Presentation by Professor Menachem Yaari
Toronto, Ontario – October 28th, 2010
Speakers:
Menahem Yaari (Hebrew University)
Larry Kotlikoff (Boston University)
Implementing the Yaari Model in Practice
Sherman Hanna (Ohio State University)
Positive vs. Normative Approaches to LifeCycle Saving and Spending Decisions
Stan Pliska (University of Illinois at Chicago)
with Discussion by Scott Richard (Wharton, University of Pennsylvania)
Optimal Life Insurance, Consumption and Investment
Takao Kobayashi (University of Tokyo)
with Discussion by Tom Salisbury (York University)
Human Capital and Asset Allocation
Siu F. Leung (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
with Discussion by Huaxiong Huang (York University)
Consumption and Annuitization
James Feigenbaum (Utah State University)
with Discussion by Jim Davies (University of Western Ontario)
Is it Really Good to Annuitize?
Svetlana Pashchenko (University of Virginia) (Ph.D. Paper Award Winner)
with Discussion by Tom Davidoff (University of British Columbia)
Accounting for Non-Annuitization
Toronto, Ontario – November 25th, 2009
Speakers:
Eytan Sheshinski, Hebrew University
‘Recent Innovations in Annuities’
Michael Sherris, University of New South Wales
‘Securitization, Structuring and Pricing of Longevity Risk’
Nabil Tahani, York University
‘Targeting Retirement Odds: Better Approximations with Higher Sustainability’
Ph.D. Student Paper Award Winners:
Luis Goncalves-Pinto, USC Marshall School of Business
‘How Does Illiquidity Affect Delegated Portfolio Choice?’
Kim Peijnenburg, Dept of Econometrics and Operations Research Tilburg University
‘Optimal Annuitization with Background Risk and Equity Exposure During Retirement’
Chicago, Illinois – November 11, 2008
Moshe A. Milevsky; “Who Buys Guaranteed Living Income Benefits (GLiBs) and Why?”
John O Brien; “The Retirement Investing Challenge”
David F. Babbel; “Un-Supermodels and the EIA”
William Reichenstein; “Withdrawal Strategies to Make Your Nest Egg Last Longer “
Peng Chen; “Retirement Income Planning: A New Efficient Frontier and Outcome Based Investment Strategies”
Toronto, Ontario – November 9th & 10th, 2008
Erhan Bayraktar; “Proving the Regularity of the Minimal Probability of Ruin via a Game of Stopping and Control “
Sid Browne; “Active portfolio management: investment goals and portfolio constraints (or how to invest, if you must)”
Steven Haberman; “The Lee-Carter Mortality Model for Mortality Dynamics: Recent Devlopments “
Sheldon Lin; “Pricing Perpetual Catastrophe Put Options and Related Issues”
Michael Ludkovski; “Optimal Risk Sharing under Distorted Probabilities “
Manuel Morales; “On a New Generalization of the Expected Discounted Penalty Function”
Ragnar Norberg; “Management of Financial and Demographic Risk in Life Insurance and Pensions “
Annamaria Olivieri; “Developing a Stochastic Mortality Model for Internal Assessments “
Shige Peng; “On Risk Measure via Gaussian Distributions under Model Uncertainty”
Gordon Willmot; “Generalized penalty functions in dependent Sparre Andersen models”
4th Annual IFID Centre Conference – May 31st, 2005
Jeffrey Brown; “The New Retirement Challenge”
Phelim Boyle; “Variable Annuity Guarantees”
William Reichenstein; “Non-qualified Guarantees in After-tax Optimizations”
Chester Spatt; Discussion of “Non-qualified Guarantees in After-tax Optimizations”
Lowell Aronoff; “An Exchange for the Canadian and US Payout Annuity Markets”
Garth Bernard; “Successful Product Innovation: Taking Concepts to Market”
Paul Kaplan; “Asset Allocation with Annuities for Retirement Income Management”
3rd Annual IFID Centre Conference – April 28, 2004
Roger Ibbotson, “Lifetime Advice: Asset Allocation, Life Insurance & Payout Annuities”
Harry Marmer, “Lessons from Capital Market History”
Laurence Booth, “Retirement Models”
Malcolm Hamilton, “The Risks and Returns for DB & DC Pension Plans”
Kristen Moore, “Optimal Asset Allocation and Ruin-Minimization Annuitization Strategies: The Fixed Consumption Case”
Ashraf Al Zaman ,”Asset Location and Allocation with Multiple Risky Assets”
Francesco Menoncin, “Mortality Risk and Real Optimal Asset Allocation for Pension Funds”
Raimond Maurer, “Betting on Death and Capital Markets in Retirement: A Shortfall Risk Analysis of Life Annuities versus Phased Withdrawal Plans”
Susan Thorp, “Annuitization and Asset Allocation with HARA Utility”
Chester Spatt, “Diversification and Capital Gains Taxes with Multiple Risky Assets”
Alexander Melnikov, “Hedging Methodologies in Equity-Linked Life Insurance”
2nd Annual IFID Centre Conference – November 21, 2002
Speakers:
James Poterba (Economics, M.I.T.), “After-tax Benchmarks for Individual Investors”
Chester Spatt (Carnegie Mellon University), “Optimal Asset Location and Allocation with Taxable and Tax-Deferred Investing” (with R. Dammon and H. Zhang)
Terrance Odean (University of California-Berkley), “Recent Developments in Behavioral Finance”
Michael Stutzer (University of Colorado), “The Ratings Game: What is the Risk in Risk-Adjusted Mutual Fund Returns?”
Svein-Arne Persson (Norwegian School of Economics), “Mortgage Financing: To Fix or To Float?”
Joao Cocco (London Business School), “Household Risk Management and Optimal Mortgage Choice” (with John Campbell)
1st Annual IFID Centre Conference – September 24, 2001
Speakers:
Richard Roll (UCLA)
Zvi Bodie (Boston U.)
Robert Brown (U. of Waterloo)
Pauline Shum (York U.)
Ted Cadsby (CIBC)
Mark Warshawsky (TIAA-CREF)
Mike Orszag (Watson Wyatt)
Larry Kotlikoff (Boston U.)