In this thesis, we investigate several stochastic approximation methods for both the computation of financial risk measures and the pricing of derivatives.As closed-form expressions are scarcely available for such quantities, %and because they have to be evaluated daily, the need for fast, efficient, and reliable analytic approximation formulas is of primal importance to financial institutions.We aim at giving a broad overview of such approximation methods and we focus on three distinct approaches.In the first part, we study some Multilevel Monte Carlo approximation methods and apply them for two practical problems: the estimation of quantities involving nested expectations (such as the initial margin) along with the discretization of integrals arising in rough forward variance models for the pricing of VIX derivatives.For both cases, we analyze the properties of the corresponding asymptotically-optimal multilevel estimatorsand numerically demonstrate the superiority of multilevel methods compare to a standard Monte Carlo.In the second part, motivated by the numerous examples arising in credit risk modeling, we propose a general framework for meta-modeling large sums of weighted Bernoullirandom variables which are conditional independent of a common factor X.Our generic approach is based on a Polynomial Chaos Expansion on the common factor together withsome Gaussian approximation. L2 error estimates are given when the factor X is associated withclassical orthogonal polynomials.Finally, in the last part of this dissertation, we deal withsmall-time asymptotics and provide asymptoticexpansions for both American implied volatility and American option prices in local volatility models.We also investigate aweak approximations for the VIX index inrough forward variance models expressed in termsof lognormal proxiesand derive expansions results for VIX derivatives with explicit coefficients.