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My friend, I am quite struggling. Just finished reading all the source reading now going twice for the detail and forgot almost a lot of the details from each chapters…. Mine exam is Nov 24th. How about you?
And I am not sure specifically on the Rating CH6. Loss, when calculating Benefit, why some times the solution times Compensation Rate and why sometimes not multiplying?
Cheers,
WilsonI think it’ll be the luck of the questions for me. I barely passed or failed fall 2018 and I graded myself hard and how rediculous cas will be with the tricks on it. We shall c…
I think it’ll be the luck of the questions for me. I barely passed or failed fall 2018 and I graded myself hard. It’ll also depend how rediculous cas will be with the tricks on the exam or asking straight forward questions. We shall c…
I’m sorry you are struggling. This is my 7th attempt at this exam. I know material well and going through it once again since exam is 12.7. I’m reviewing questions in LAE reserving right now particularly ULAE since tends to be a disconnect from the rest of the reserving material. Ratemaking material just needs to practice problems but more in the chapters 9-16. Chapter 1-8 are all connected. I worry about the aggregation in the beginning of the ratemaking material since don’t know how questions might be. Last sitting had horrible problem where had to figure out the earning pattern and it wasn’t uniform. We shall see what questions the CAS puts this time.
Fingers crossed. I know it is hard ,that need to split all the Policy and Calculate the Earning% by Policy or Timing the Written% differently when It is not written uniformly, definitely need to review that questions. I am more stuck on the Implementation, where all the Base Rate and stuffs, the text is easy but the question is hard.
For example not know what is Off-Balance Relativity, I understand OBF is just the Base Rate Adjustment to make to Satisfy the Overall Prem% and Rel Change….
I have been reviewed like crazy….
So far took two past exams and I think I’m doing well enough to feel somewhat confident.
Am I correct to recall CAS passed less people from the last exam 5 sitting than usual?
I think 10% point less than usual.Are we allowed to say exam was easy fair or hard? Or like how the experience was at all in excel (I haven’t taken it yet)?
Yeah I was going to ask what is allowed to be said about the exam. I’m curious what people thought of the spreadsheet. I wonder what’s different compared to the regular MS Excel. Could I used shift, ctrl buttons to move around the cell, etc.
Also, how much work needs to be explicitly shown given graders can see the formulas.
I think it’s fair to say that the modified Excel is good. It was better than I thought it would be. I can’t really say if the exam was easy/hard/comparable to other exams, BUT
I would like to express my concern regarding the degree of difficulty for the fall 2019 sitting of this exam and also the relationship of the exam to the source material.
I feel that the questions were sometimes asked in a way that was arguably too different from the way that the concepts are presented in Werner and Modlin. Once I review the solutions to these questions, I understand and even appreciate the new way of looking at the topic, however I don’t feel that the exam was an appropriate place to introduce new “twists” on tested concepts.
For instance, in the text and all prior exams and practice exams that I took, Hawayne’s method had three territories, one base and two to use for the compliment. Each territory had two sub categories. Then in the exam itself, the Harwayne question had TWO territories and FOUR subcategories within each territory.
I’m torn about this as of course we should all understand how to modify calculations for any number of territories and subcategories, however unfortunately I don’t feel that this was covered thoroughly enough in the Werner and Modlin source material.
This is not the only example of this problem.
Now the CAS has announced that it will no longer be publishing exams that are given. The problem is that if the exams are going to be asking questions in a very different way from how the topics are presented in Werner and Modlin, then they should be publishing the exams so that either study material creators can modify their materials or students can at least have more practice material that will actually be applicable to the material that will be in the exam.
Either that or I feel that the exams should more closely represent the source material. Harwayne’s method isn’t thoroughly covered in Werner and Modlin. It’s covered but not in great depth and I feel that this question was one that one would not be able to answer correctly if their understanding of Harwayne’s method did not extend beyond the scope of the source material.
Either source material needs to change to better match the exams or the exams need to better match the source material.
Unfortunately, exams have to introduce “twists” so that not too many candidates pass. Let’s face it, Exam 5 material isn’t technically difficult and the pass rates would be insanely high (like 80%) if they didn’t have these twists and didn’t pressure candidates with time.
I do agree in that I find it annoying CAS has to resort to other ways to ensure enough people fail in each sitting. What I’m upset about is particularly for 2019 fall sitting. That was my second attempt (never failed an exam twice), and they failed more people than they’ve ever did in a sitting historically. Both times, I got a 5 but I felt pretty confident in passing in that fall 2019 sitting but still just got a 5. I wonder, had they kept the pass rate at 40% if my 5 would have been a 6.
Thank you TryhardActuary for posting this. Fall 2019 was also my second attempt and I also got a 5. I got a 4 the fist time that I took the exam. Something needs to happen because the exam and the study materials should match – weather that be the source materials change to match the exam (in which case the CAS should continue to publish exams after they have been given) or the exams should be a better match of the source materials.
Yes I feel that the source materials should also change and perhaps teach Harwayne’s method in more depth in addition to other topics.
I don’t want this, or any exam, to be “too easy”. There was also a question for credibility that involved using the normal distribution table in order to calculate total number of claims needed for full credibility. I don’t believe that using the normal distribution for calculating credibility was covered in the materials (to this degree) for this exam and there are plenty of other methods to choose from that ARE covered in the source material. This begs the question as to why in the world was this selected as the method for calculating the compliment of credibility?
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