CA3 April 2009

What do you think about Apr 09 paper? I wanna give up during the 15mins reading time.......gosh....

 

The people in the UK haven't finished it yet!

 

The first question is the hardest one I've seen. You're not the only one. I wanted to give up as soon as I saw "immunisation"....

 

I thought it was a good paper.

The first question wasn't hard at all - it was just that the reading excript they gave you was total rubbish and a little bit confusing. Especially if you have forgotten everything about immunisation.

 

What a paper!!!

I rest my case by just referring to the CA3 subject objectives:

"...students are required to communicate fundamental actuarial ideas..."

So if the examiners think that the idea of immunsation is a fundamental one (and could come up in an exam) probably they should have gone out in the market and save it before it crushed...after all immunisation is as fundamental as managing toxic products...

It was my first (and hopefully the last time I sit this paper) and I feel that it has been disadvantageously made much harder than other years.

I cannot understand this... you have the same time (and the same marks) for a full 3 page question of some forgotten risk management technique and then you have the rest of the past papers 1999-2008 that are simple questions!!!

Well this is not fair.

 

You didn't need to know much about immunisation to answer the question? The example was provided and so was a high level reason it worked.

You just needed to write it down in a simple way.

 

How did you guys find question 2? It is something similar to Sept 99 Q paper right?

How did you tackle the 8000 to 4000??? I

 

You can work out the approx reduction using the assumptions quite easily..... I didn't realise the course went back so far.... Surely if you did that much revision it should be an easy pass!

 

hehehe, not really...

i think I got that part mixed up. I interpreted this decrease in the maximum values as a revision of the maximum amount of claims payable per claim...not that it was a result of a calculation . I concluded that because it said "maximum payout per claim" and not "average payout per claim" . So i concluded that there was a lower ceiling which did not add much to the model hence the effect was negligible on the premium...I guess that this is wrong though..

 

Hi

i share your views to some extent.
My interpretation (Im pretty sure i could be worng) was the standard CT1 immunisation - i.e construct asset protfolio to move in line with liabilities as interest rates move. I based answer around thsi concept and thought the draft form the team member was filled with rubbish definitions - the example about immuniosation involving reinvestment of coupons seemed plain rubbish.

teh only decent example given was teh 10/20 year bonds (assets ) and the 15 year bond (liabilities) and teh differences as interest rates moved

 

CA3 - most difficult exam ever.
Perhaps this is the Institute's way of telling us to sit the practical exam.

 

i note the price of exam is £705 - now for that price what will the pass rates be?

 

About 55%:
http://www.actuaries.org.uk/students/exam_results/ca3

 

I found the communication of question 1 terrible....so I ignored the entire thing and wrote a response based on what I know about immunisation, a risky technique I thought. It would be unfair to expect sitters to discart the info as rubbish (when often the info provided is completely acceptable) and rely on their own knowledge...as this is testing communication afterall....they may realise this and print an examiners report such as "students generally messed up and didn't understand the concept of immunisation at all, but were not heavily penalised for this" tehe

 

How likely this is ...!!!

This is as likely as Inter who is out of the Champions League to win the Trophy for the 2009 Champion of the Champions...!!!

I definitely share your views about how terrible question 1 was!!!

 

Question 1 WAS completely terrible and anyone who says otherwise is a complete prat who just wants to make everyone else feel small and themselves look like a freakin' actuarial genius. Get over yourself.

 

Well said Ginger....

 

You did bad so you are taking it out on other people who think they did well?

I thought it was an easy question.

Why?

Because I ignored the bits that didn't make sense to me (the first written example about the bonds offsetting).

Then I knew what immunisation was anyway, but if I didn't the second example with the 10 & 20 year asset bonds and 15 year liability bond was enough to remind me. Then I just simply wrote about it with not that much technical info (which was required).

What exactly was so tough? The fact you couldn't ignore two paragraphs? Or, did you just panic and not even try?

 

Did no-one else write "immunisation can be used to stop people getting swine flu"?

 

ha ha ha.. very funny..

 

I didn't panic at all. I ignored most of the material given and just went for it. "Taking it out on other people" who think they've done well?! No, I was commenting on your arrogance.