On June 11, 2025, at 14:00 am, the 45th Forum on Digital Technology and Economic Finance Frontiers was successfully held. The theme of the lecture was "Survey on Deep Reinforcement Learning: Methods and Applications in Finance and Actuarial Science", and the guest speaker was Professor Yongzeng Lai from Wilfrid Laurier University. The lecture was chaired by Xianming  Sun, Associate Professor of the Finance School and executive Deputy Director of the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance. More than 30 teachers and students from the School of Finance participated in this lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Associate Professor Xianming  Sun briefly introduced relevant information of Professor Yongzeng Lai to the participants and expressed his sincere gratitude for his availability to give a lecture at our college despite his busy schedule.

During the lecture, Professor Yongzeng Lai  introduced Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) as a transformative approach to solving sequential decision-making problems, suitable for high-dimensional environments with uncertainty. He elaborated on core algorithms such as value functions, policy gradients, and actor-critics, and expounded on their applications in finance (portfolio optimization, algorithmic trading, risk management) and actuarial science (dynamic pricing, claims reserves). Finally, he analyzed challenges and outlined future directions.

Finally, the participants engaged in active academic exchanges with  Associate Professor Xianming  Sun, discussing the lecture topic together. Professor Lai provided detailed answers to the questions and concerns raised by the teachers and students. Professor Jing Shi expressed gratitude for Professor Yongzeng Lai's presentation. With this, the current session of the forum came to a successful conclusion.

Speaker Introduction

Yongzeng Lai, Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, obtained his Bachelor's degree in 1983 and Master's degree in 1988 from the Department of Mathematics at Sun Yat-sen University. He received his Ph.D. in January 2000 from Claremont Graduate University in California, USA. From May 2000 to June 2002, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Finance and the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His main research areas include Financial Mathematics (pricing and risk management of derivatives, financial computation, portfolio optimization, applications of stochastic analysis in finance and insurance), applications of differential equations in finance and economics, Monte Carlo and quasi-Monte Carlo simulation methods and applications; machine learning and its applications, particularly in economics and finance. He has published over 70 papers in international journals such as Automatica, Computers & Operations Research, Economic Modeling, Expert Systems with Applications, Energy Economics, Finance Research Letters, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, and Journal of Computational Finance. He has secured multiple grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and serves as a member of the NSERC Mathematics and Statistics Grant Selection Committee.

Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance introduction

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic acceleration in a digital revolution in economic sectors and a rapid adoption of the new generation of information technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data, etc. These technologies effectively set off the digital economy. It has become a key driving force in creating global economic growth, improving the modernization level of governance capabilities, and promoting high-quality economic development in China. In particular, digital finance is the most important part of the digital economy. To explore the development direction of the cross-integration of digital technology and finance, the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance is hosting the “Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance”, in collaboration with the School of Finance, Wenlan School of Business, Economics School, School of Information and Safety Engineering, School of Statistics and Mathematics, School of Public Finance and Taxation of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL). This lecture series will invite the well-known scholars at home and abroad in digital technology, digital economy, digital finance, and other related fields as guest speakers, providing an open and cutting-edge academic exchange platform for interdisciplinary research on digital technology and finance.