Hey guys, How did you find it? Admittedly I'm in Australia and we may have sat it early, so I'll wait till the UK people are done before I post my thoughts...
PS The pass rate seems to be about 67% (working it out from the pass lists). I wonder what raw mark is needed to pass... cos it's so easy to make a mistake on all those long calculation questions!
thanks admin. I was trying to work out the time that the UK people sat it, but failed miserably - couldn't work out whether it was the day before or the day after us. I guess they haven't done it yet... waiting for some responses!!
Being cautious of course.... But I thought overall not a bad paper, though some of the questions were a little tough. Not sure if I passed - can't believe it'll be the 7th December before I know.... (I've gotten too used to computing exams where you either get the result on the spot or at worst within 24 hours). Thomas
Oh goody we can discuss it now? I was really anxious cos this is the 1st exam I've sat in actuarial studies. My degree was B.Maths and I've never done any financial stuff (not even basic annuities etc)... company gave me study leave + paid for the exam, I won't be able to show my face at work if I failed! My thoughts: - forward pricing qns were quite straightforward - have no idea about the gross redemption yield question (where you need to use the spot yields), I got 1%, doesn't look right. - mortgages question (customers vs bank)... that was such a looooong question! gah! - duration/convexity - some annoying maths there, definitely lost a few marks there. So.......... probably threw away about 20 marks or so, would that be bad??
Agreed I liked the start, up to the foward pricing and the lognormal question, q10 but the banks vs customers threw me, as did the end of 11, the durations - I could not get any sensible answers out! 21 marks for one question... I had a good go at the LIRR, TWRR & MWRR, but I'm not sure. I did think it was of a harder standard than a lot of the past papers...
For question 11 I calculated the DMT, not the velocity/duration. I actually thought Question 10 was okay - managed to get both assertions down to a reasonable equation... Thomas
More or less agree with everyone else (though I quite liked finally getting the spot-rate bond pricing question out in the dying minutes of the exam). 10 and 11 were awkward little ******s. Just two things to add: The TWRR/MWRR/LIRR question was annoying - especially as the 'rates of return' that they gave weren't very specific (no mention of p.a. effective - were the first two rates over a 6-month period or per annum?). Very odd, especially as they're usually so careful with their definitions (so that we trip up!) Did anyone else think the marks scheme for the lognormal question was the wrong way round (i.e. should have been 3 for the proof, 6 for the probability). Maybe I did that one incorrectly if not...
Thoughts on Exam I thought the paper was fair enough. Some of the questions on the exam were identical to those on previous exams. However, the calculations involved in last question were very tedious and messy. I failed to complete the last two parts of the problem. I also thought the TWRR question was a little odd. I worked out the LIRR to be identical to the TWRR (approximately 6.9%) and the MWRR to be 6%. I wasn't that confident with the answers in that question so I'd say their wrong. Question 10 was also a bit tricky also. Since this was my first actuarial exam its very difficult to gauge how well I did. I know the institute don't disclose the pass mark but would anyone be able to tell me if they think it could be as high as 70%?
Regarding question 10. I worked out the bank's assertion to be incorrect and the union's assertion to be corrrect.
A very hard paper I lost about 30ish marks. Log question was hard. TWRR and MWRR was hard GRY was hard DMT was hard and it was an unbalanced paper wrt to marks per concept. id say the 80/20 rule could be applied: 80% of the marks were in 20% of the questions. However it was fun doing it as was challenging. Lets and pray and hope all our results are fun as well !
I'm wondering about this. It's clear that a number of us came to the same conclusion - one assertion right, one wrong. In both cases I took the assertion made (for example by the consumer association) and found that the PV of the loan was less than would be indicated by the rate of interest in question. I therefore concluded that the consumer association was incorrect (it was asserting rates over 200% - but at 200% the PV was < 2000, the amount of the loan) since if the rate was higher than that, the PV of the loan was therefore lower. Comments? T.
I used substitution and found that the interest rate for the banks loan lay within 200% and 250%. ie. consumers assertion is correct. I have no idea what I got for the banks one though, that question was much toooooo long!
I'm afraid that I obtained PV at asserted interest rate in both cases higher than original loan amount. The logic of the remaining part is the same as yours.
What calculation did you use? PV of the payments for a customer that meets all his payments comes out as at 2400a_2^(12).... I've run the calculation on this twice and I get that that evaluates out to 1854 pounds - which looks like the answer I got in the exam.... Thomas
