Spring 2012

[Vorian Atreides]

I have heard (from a very reliable source) that TIA hired someone to do Exam 7 (and I believe that Exam 7 is this person's only focus). So, it could be a pretty good set up.

[snoo]

Originally Posted by Vorian Atreides

I have heard (from a very reliable source) that TIA hired someone to do Exam 7 (and I believe that Exam 7 is this person's only focus). So, it could be a pretty good set up.

I really hope they do a good job and quickly!

[Smartbill]

I might be in as well!

[Bobby]

I'm going for 9 instead. Good luck you guys.

[Vorian Atreides]

[Vorian Atreides]

Originally Posted by snoo

I really hope they do a good job and quickly!

I wouldn't place any bets on it getting out before Dec 15 . . . it'll probably be the case that the complete set up won't be finished until early Jan.

But they'll likely start selling it next month with some of the material completed early Dec.

(Note that this is all speculation on my part. No inside source info on that!)

[Bobby]

So which cohort of students do you think will be stronger? This sitting or the next sitting?

This sitting, you have students that:
-Took new 5 and passed on first try.
-Passed exam 5B (on first try) and passed old 5.
-Failed 5B last sitting and doubling up on upcoming sitting of 5B + 7.
-A handful of retakers from last sitting.

Next sitting, you'll have students that:
-Took Exam 5 and passed on first try, took Exam 9 and passed on first try
-Took new 5 and passed on first try
-Took new 5 twice and passed on second try
-Passed 5B on first try, passed exam 9 on first try
-Passed 5B on second try
-Retakers of 7

Also, I wonder how many people will be taking this exam? I'm thinking 100-200. And then next sitting it will jump to 250-300. It'll probably take 4-5 years before the test reaches "full population" where people aren't skipping it anymore due to its immaturity.

[snoo]

Originally Posted by Bobby

I'm going for 9 instead. Good luck you guys.

LOVE this pic!!!

[Ceej]

Originally Posted by snoo

Yay! I just looked at the amount of material and on the surface it doesn't look like the beast exam 6 was. So there's that.

- The amount of material is not that bad, but what made the first sitting difficult was the shooting into the dark about what could be asked from incredibly dense material.

Well, ehhh, I did like the ERM portion (interesting enough), but the advanced reserving papers made me want to jab a pen in my eye. Pen - in - the - eye. The worst part about studying for this exam last year was that there really wasn't any help aside the syllabus to guide you to what to focus on and needed to use Youtube to dumb down some of the concepts. And the advanced reserving is full of notation and no real application - you'll see - of the formulas they give you. It could be that I was lazy (and trying to focus on 5B, and haven't taken Exam 4 yet) but I just found it difficult to conceive a problem from all the notation. And I refuse to memorize distributions - there should be tables for those things. That's right, I dislike math-a-betical soup.

I think the benefit for those that just took Exam 6 is that you're familiar with Solvency II and RBC - the papers (and boy there are many) on the in tinkerings of Solvency II will not be so daunting... and you won't have to look up silly words for background context like prudent person approach or "provisions" or counter party default. You'll have some familiarity and it won't be as foreign.

Also, pointage wise - old Exam 6 +Goldfarb's Valuation at most account for maybe 30%, even less - probs like very low 20% of the actual points (based on syllabus). You may be counting a Clark or a Mack paper that was on old Exam 6 but it's not correct, there's a brand spanking new paper by one of those authors and I can't remember who. Bottomline, don't expect too much of your old school knowledge - reinsurance is good, GBentaker, that one thing with the ax+b thing... what was that paper... I don't remember but it was easy. Good stuff.

Positive of taking this exam now: There's help, apparently - and I thought that came in the form of Ken Fikes. I know in Fall 2010 during the old exam 6 seminar, he mentioned he was reviewing the Exam 7 material for seminars. Manuals - okay, I lie there were manuals/outlines released by Actex and All10, which were nice but painful at the same time. Actex was purely an outline of the paper (no, absolutely NO problems not even from old exams) -if I had enough time I think I and certainly GSII could have created something similar. In fact, I'd go on to say that GSII probably gave more additional help in his guides than Actex. Plus GSII prepared sample questions, which I hope and expect Actex to add with this edition but I was grateful for it as it skinnied down the material and provided a good quick read to see all of it/review. All10 had a manual for part A & B of the syllabus (basically all except the ERM, bummer) but for the new papers just provided summaries with no sample problems...old papers they at least put in the old exam problems. The summaries were overload of the new papers, but were much better to read than the actual paper. So, best manual for the exam? Meh, take your pick. I'd get both again if I could.

All in all. Interesting exam, I didn't think the exam was that bad last year. I thought they tested exactly what they said on the syllabus but I just didn't actually know how to take what was in the papers and apply it. I'm not that creative. Now seeing a few problems... I think the advanced reserving part will be easier to grasp. I put in about meh, ~200 hour maybe on this exam and got a four and left at least 3 of the large advanced reserving problems completely blank (well, I wrote a bunch of background on the concept they were testing, but that was tap dancing - maybe they gave me a .25pt).

[snoo]

Ceej,

Putting in 200 hours and pulling out a 4 is remarkable for these upper level exams! You should actually feel pretty good about that, especially since it was the first time this exam has been offered - ever! Thanks for your summary. I will go with TIA as I've been quite happy with them in the past. And since one guy is dedicated to this exam I am hopeful that he can rollout good material in good time.

Good luck to all that are studying for this exam!