Unemployed student exam progression

Discussion in 'General study / exams' started by Harashima Senju, Feb 22, 2019.

  1. Viki2010

    Viki2010 Member

    And how is the employer's support for IFOA exams in Switzerland?

    From my fact finding and personal experience none of the "mainland Europe" based employers support IFOA exams in terms of offering study packages, tutorials, study days etc.
     
  2. Infinity

    Infinity Member

    Some do. Some don’t. You are open to try to get them to offer you support. If you ask I’m sure you’ll get. Most are used to the the easy exams available on the continent and do not appreciate the sacrifice involved in taking the IFOA exams. They do not appreciate the normality of failure especially when the IFOA publish that it takes 3 years to get qualified on their website
     
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  3. almost_there

    almost_there Member

    I've seen IFoA blame employers for not giving enough study time. Anything but self-reflect on why their exams require 20+ hours a week studying when they've deemed equivalent other qualification regimes where nowhere near that is required to prepare to pass their assessments. Do they really think employers will provide more than 5-6 hours a week study time and pay full-time salaries to people only there part-time? The problem lies with IFoA and the huge volume of material they insist people must put in their heads for these exams. Of course reducing materials means reducing exams and £ for IFoA but IFoA will keep insisting every problem or complaint is somehow everyone else's fault.
     
  4. Infinity

    Infinity Member

    The ifoa know about this as well as the arbitrage between the systems. Yet they let it go on. Better to do that than admit a mistake. It’s all about saving face
     
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  5. almost_there

    almost_there Member

    Indeed the ramifications of this false and misleading information published by IFoA for years, expressed by their CEO and Directors in magazine articles for years, has been detrimental for many people. It's even found its way to University career sites and the Government info page for actuarial profession. Also people are unnecessarily feeling a sense of personal inadequacy when they spend 10+ years to qualify when they hear such statements of being able to do it in 3 years.
     
  6. Infinity

    Infinity Member

    Employers are not keen to pay for exams which are inherently useless, not required by law. The IFOA and their sister Organisation the AAE were campaigning for the actuary to be more integrated into law and required for certain jobs. They have been told to bugger off and their lobbying was not welcome. Now they have failed, they want fellowship to become obsolete. Why did many people take over a decade to qualify for a qualification which is just not required?
     
  7. almost_there

    almost_there Member

    Instead of IFoA actually putting an end to the arbitrage they stubbornly fob off anyone who complains, preferring to send solicitors with low IQ arguments to insult people's intelligence that somehow it's all equal and properly done while concealing their workings. Imagine an actuary conducting him/herself like that in a professional environment.
     
  8. Viki2010

    Viki2010 Member

    I guess the mutual recognition "mistake" may be resolved by Brexit.
     
  9. Bidza

    Bidza Member

    This is my take. I am also from Zim and was unemployed for about a year and half(this is more to do with the economic mess in the country than anything else). I had 5 CTs at the time. I focused on writing the exams and in a year I was able to pass to pass the remaining CTs and CA1. I got a job later on. For the other 6 months I unfortunately ran out of funds and could not write in that year. I however focused on learning the skills that would help in the workplace. I polished up on my excel and VBA and did a bit of R programming.

    Whether you should write or not is now up to you. If your long term goal is become an actuary (and if you can afford the exams) then I would say go ahead and write. If you feel that the actuarial route is not for you then you can use the time you have now to upskill yourself whilst you wait for your breakthrough.
     
  10. Viki2010

    Viki2010 Member

    That's a great story!

    I would only add to this that if you are unsure mid way, it may become increasingly difficult to persist with the exams later on, as they become more of a burden from the time, family, cost, work point of view....
     
  11. Viki2010

    Viki2010 Member

    Hi Infinity, when you say "exams are worthless" - this is not exactly right. In the UK, the employers are negotiating/managing student's salaries based on exam passes. Some companies have very precise figures attached to each exam. On the other hand, "the experience" does not seem to have any solid market value. This is on the perm side. Maybe on the contracting front is the other way around. Outside of the UK, in countries with their local examining bodies, I would tend to agree that the UK exams are not valued more than any other exams.
     
  12. Infinity

    Infinity Member

    this is the issue. Employers are basing salary on exams which are not even required except for a handful of reserved functions. For solvency 2, for example, you don’t even need to be an actuary. As can clearly be seen from this chartered actuary proposal, the fellowship is not even really required anymore. Employers should basebpay rides on performance like in any other normal profession. I’ve learnt nothing from the exams. Having taken them for over a decade, there has been very little value attached to the knowledge I have acquired from Acted and the IFOA. I have just been memorizing useless information which I will never use again and demonstrating this (now repeatedly) In useless exams. In other countries you don’t have to go through this process for a reason.
     
  13. Viki2010

    Viki2010 Member

    In conclusion, exams are not worthless, because UK employers are attaching monetary value to each exam pass.
     
  14. Infinity

    Infinity Member

    You could get a pay rise without sitting ridiculous exams.
     
  15. almost_there

    almost_there Member

    I was reading about IFoA practicing certificates last night, required for some Chief Actuary type jobs, and despite all the hype about Chartered Actuary they have closed the Associate path to this certificate so must be Fellow first for that. However Fellows via MRA are still fine to apply for a practicing certificate when everyone knows IFoA Fellow is harder to achieve via exams compared to recognition, especially if qualified on the continent from a degree course for which IFoA should only have given them Associate at best. The more we look the more calamities we find.
     
  16. Viki2010

    Viki2010 Member

    It's harder to negotiate anything without exam passes. Also, even if you have 10, 20 or 30 years of experience and did not fully completed all exams i.e. "senior student" level, your "worth" would be the same as another student with the same number of exam passes. This proves that experience is less valued than exam passes for any actuarial student in the UK.
     
  17. Viki2010

    Viki2010 Member

    Well, that's really funny one :D
    How can someone without sitting ST/SP, SA and P exams or equivalent have any clue about UK insurance regulations and products? What's the point of having these exams as in the end someone from another country can become a UK qualified Chief Actuary without going through these exams.....especially that this may apply to someone who as just graduated from a 2 year European master's degree and worked 1 year in the UK to get the FIA *.
     
  18. almost_there

    almost_there Member

    Viki, it's an absolute farce. Sadly it's just one of many unexplainable IFoA 'policies', for which there is no complaints process to get them fixed and no oversight body which does anything about it.

    I'll give you another example of a farcical situation. If IFoA Fellows want to become IAI Fellows then unless they actually become a resident of India they must have 10 years post-qualification of general/health work experience.
    http://www.actuariesindia.org/subMenu.aspx?id=25&val=Types_of_Membership
     
  19. Bob91

    Bob91 Member

    Like the majority has said, see what can offer you the best benefits. If I were you, I would probably spend my time learning R, Excel+VBA and maybe Python. Passing more exams just doesn't make sense if you are intending to stay in Zim, from what I've managed to find on the Internet, there where only TWO actuaries there in 2009 (not sure about the current situation but the number probably didn't change much due to the recent events).

    Your best option seems to be researching what is expected in the job offers in your country (I assume there aren't many) or finding out the country you want to emigrate to and assessing the Visa requirements.

    Unfortunately it seems like UK actuarial market is the most saturated one so IFoA is trying everything they can in order to keep the designation prestigious. Another thing is they seem to be very confused as to the details of what they want and often change their mind making it even more complicated to understand their "logic".
     
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  20. Tony Singh

    Tony Singh Member

    I have been unable to break into the profession at all. I started studying for the exams while working in a different industry, computer software. I studied very hard, initially getting through my exams without any problem. I kept failing CT4 by 1 or 2 marks every time. Results were becoming paradoxical, I failed by a greater margin when I was better prepared! In the end I lost interest, I simply could not see where marks were being lost, I wasn't learning anything new. I even wrote C++ code on weekends to automate modelling to aid my understanding. I ended up writing a pricing library.
    I am willing to concede that maybe I am not good enough, but even I feel that if people are taking exams 3 or 4 times and still failing; the institute is not providing a good enough education. I met a South African FIA on a trip to Thailand earlier this year who failed two exams, a total of 7 times. In an exasperated tone he uttered: "I'm done with exams". What good would this particular FIA be in progressing the future of this profession, if for him further study becomes a tortuous prospect. A teacher should be judged by his/her failures, not only his/her successes.
    I had the ambition of introducing new technologies into the profession, i guess now I'll vanish without a trace. What I don't understand is that students with training contracts at firms always progress at lightning speed compared with independent students. I won't ask how many school leavers became FIA's.
    There is an important word which gives the value behind education and cannot be watered down: Rigour. This word ensures that a skill is worth more than a piece of paper, rather it becomes celebrated. However in certain instances the institute has concentrated on skills which are out of place with what an Actuary actually does. The data science module does not deal with big data computation or genetic learning algos. Over importance is given to financial engineering which now comprises 2 modules, no mention is given of caratheodory theorem as part of the theory of measures, a key result. The qualification deals too much with theoretical foundations that it forgets the computation. This is what I wanted to learn.

    When learning CT5 for instance, there was little consistency when pricing contracts. Eventually pricing boiled down to assumptions that were not explicitly stated or rules of thumb. Independent /dependant probabilities can be calculated in many different ways for example, questions leave an uncomfortable ambiguity. This is what I found uncomfortable. My software background kept me thinking about consistency. If you have read mark schemes you'll understand what i mean.The chain ladder method in CT6 is essentially linear interpolation without an intecept term! Yet I am supposed to believe that it is state of the art.

    If this is why the qualification is difficult then I have failed to see its virtue. The strange thing is that the best actuaries are more into teaching than practise.

    What I have also found in the UK is that one has to jump through so many hoops until he/she gets noticed. When I started work in California, just recently, the philosophy was: "Show us what you've got". This attitude is precisely why the US/Far East are hotbeds of innovation.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 19, 2019
  21. Infinity

    Infinity Member

    It’s not your fault. The IFOA’s marking is questionable. The marking is done by volunteers with no educational experience.

    Read this post which Acted have closed off.

    https://www.acted.co.uk/forums/index.php?threads/sa4-sep-2018-results.15446/page-2#post-58683
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 24, 2019
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