How did everyone find today's paper? Thought paper A was quite time pressured but paper B was okay...
Hi, I agree with you. I felt paper B was much easier than paper A. The credit risk question (q4) was a bit odd, it was very different to credit risk questions in past papers. I also struggled with some parts of the self-financing portfolios question (q6 I think).
Also found paper A pretty challenging and there was no way I could finish the paper in time. I thought that extra time was meant to be allowed for the fact that we had to write our answers in a Word document, but it didn't feel like that at all. I kept going over 1.8 mins per mark with most questions, but I guess writing a maths exam in a Word document is a skill in itself. Paper B was much easier and definitely doable in the time we were given.
Agreed, for me Paper B was better than Paper A. Of course the marks for commenting in Paper A made me uncomfortable. For Paper A, they should have taken into account that typing takes longer when you are dealing with formulas. All the best to everyone
i found paper A to be better than B to be honest. i found the question wording in paper B to be slightly confusing. reading other comments is worrying me that i didnt put enough detail into my answers! i had another look and wrote a full paragraph for nearly every comment-style question though..
That's the dream though, paper A weighting is worth so much. It is much better to do well in A. What was confusing about Paper B? I think I found them both ok, especially compared to CS2 which was a total nightmare.
Hey! I found paper A very very time pressured, I felt I was often forcing myself to move onto the next question. I couldn't do Q2, at all... and I know I messed up the utility function end part of Q1, I planned to come back if I had time at the end. Looked at it after the exam and figured out where I went wrong on that which is always annoying! The rest I felt I could have a go at. Think there was a mistake on the triangle Q, it asked for outstanding I think and didn't give us paid. Paper B, I think the calcs were okay. I defo don't think I wrote enough at all for the two 8-mark comment questions at all, so will have lost marks there.
I agree, Paper A was so time pressured. There were a number of questions I just had to move on from which was annoying given I thought most of the paper was attemptable. I was impressed with Paper B, it is the first paper I've seen where you could actually understand what the examiner was asking and not much was ambiguous.
Totally agree with all of you. Not enough time for paper A, didn't have time to do Q2, and had to leave one or two other things unfinished. On the contrary, I found paper B to be really accesible. I finished the exam half an hour in advance so I had plenty of time to thoroughly check everything. Unfortunately, paper B is just 30% of the final mark. What do you think the passing mark will be? ~60?
I am thinking of sitting this exam in April, and wondering where the questions asked similar to those in past papers?
I didn't think there were any particularly unusual questions in paper A. Looks like the papers are now up at: https://www.actuaries.org.uk/studying/prepare-your-exams/past-exam-papers-and-examiners-reports
how did you handle the no recombining binomial tree one? i made 2 risk neutral q values and used them appropriately to find the fair price. wasn't sure though... i couldn't do the following 2 marker questions after that also was q2 the 2 state model in disguise? i dont think i did well on that one...
For Q7iii the binomial tree I used two q values like you did. This looked similar to Q2 of the Specimen CM2B paper where there were different risk-free rates and it resulted in differing q values for each time period. Q7iv and v were very similar to an X assignment question - X3.3 from the CMP. Q2 looked like a geometric Brownian motion thing to me. There's a log-normal distribution that can be written down for that and then could get to mean/variance from there. Whether that was the right thing to do is another matter I guess.
lol woops rather than q2, i meant q4. was q4 like a 2 state model in disguise? and yeah my q2, i did the same as you.
I did similar things for Q7 and Q2. For Q4 I think the key part of the question was "If the customer is declared insolvent before the loan is repaid, the bank will receive nothing." which gave a clue to a 2 state model. Thats what I thought anyway
I put reduced form but wasn't really sure. Seems like 2 state model is a sensible answer though. Fortunately the bit asking specifically what it was had only 1 mark assigned.
