Kannoo (Ravi) Ravindran, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Practice in Actuarial Science

Ravi's experience includes consulting with financial institutions and commodity producers globally on all aspects of derivatives trading/modeling, financial engineering, risk management, and auditing of trading models/processes. In addition to this, he also managed various hedge fund strategies and lectured globally on topics relating to risk management and trading.

Despite his broad market experience, Ravi's expertise lies primarily in blending real-time exotic derivatives trading, financial engineering, and portfolio management in nearly every asset class as both a market-maker and a hedger. Succinctly put, this expertise lies in risk-managing and trading exotic and correlated risks (both short-dated and long-dated) in illiquid markets.

In addition to trading/structuring derivatives in both financial and physical markets for billion-dollar corporations globally, Ravi has also managed in excess of USD 100 billion in assets and advised on a plethora of issues relating to variable/fixed-indexed/registered index-linked annuity products for insurance and re-insurance companies.

In addition to being a former CEO of RGA Financial Products and Head of Global Exotic Derivatives at Toronto-Dominion Bank, Ravi was also awarded the Society of Actuaries Presidential Award in 2020.

Despite his hectic professional calendar, Ravi remains passionate about teaching and writing. To this end, he has written and edited at least four books on various subjects (e.g., derivatives, financial mathematics, and variable annuities), received a few teaching accolades, and held several visiting/adjunct appointments at various tertiary institutions (e.g., McMaster University, National University of Singapore, Peking University, Reykjavik University, University of Toronto, and University of Waterloo).

Contact Information

Email: kannoo.ravindran@drake.edu
Phone: 515-271-3080
Address: 2847 University Avenue Des Moines, IA 50311

Office: Aliber Hall 343

Education

• Ph.D., Statistics, University of Waterloo

Areas of Expertise

• Risk Management
• Derivatives
• Trading
• Applied Probability
• Annuities
• Artificial Intelligence
• Large Data
• Bayesian Statistics