CA3 Irony

First some qualifiers: I agree with the need for CA3; I think the Course Notes are very helpful; I have not passed the exam yet; someone will probably disagree with my use of semi-colons.

With that out of the way, I read an article today called "Estimating the Cost of Securing Benefits with Insurance Companies" found on the Profession's website. It was written in November 2005 (meant to be read by actuaries) and its content is a little out of date. However, the real issue is why doesn't it follow the same rules that we are bound by in CA3? In particular:

The sentences are very long. I found one sentence with 47 words.
There is no consistency as to whether "buy-out cost" is hyphenated or not.
There are single digit numbers as numbers, not text. (OK, not too big a deal.)
There is information in the conclusion that is not referred to in the report itself!

If we are made to pass CA3 to prove our communication skills, should all of our peers not follow similar guidelines?

As students, our names rarely appear at the bottom of letters. CA3 is in the middle of the exams and so our hopeful CA3 sucess will not be directly beneficial to non-actuaries for years to come. If we are to prove we are a profession of good communicators, then maybe we should require all actuaries to pass CA3 as part of their CPD. I for one would be interested to see the pass rate.

 

Communication is about your audience. So the Profession could use that an an excuse for having an article on its website that does not meet the standard required to pass CA3. That article is aimed at actuaries!