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Excel in Paper A

R

Rebecca Lawless

Made first post
To what extent are we allowed to use excel for paper A? For example if a runoff triangle or BS option price question came up would we be allowed to copy and paste it from excel? I have looked on the institutes website and can’t find anything.
 
For the removal of doubt: the IFoA are the final authority on what is, and what isn't, allowed during their exams. Anything you read here is interpretation and speculation.
Excel can be used to the extent that it's a glorified calculator. For example, it can conveniently calculate \(\Phi(x)\) values without having to interpolate between values on pages 160-161 of the Tables. It's just a replacement for your old Casio FX-83.
For a Black-Scholes pricing question, undoubtedly you'd want to perform the computation in Excel, but your Word document exam script would need to show the line-by-line working you'd perform as if it was calculated by hand - just like maths exams have always required.
Hope that helps.
 
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