I am thinking of moving to Australia some time in the next couple of years. I've pretty much done all of the CT's and CA's so just got ST's and an SA left. Firstly does Australia have the same exam structure as the UK? I think it does from looking at other posts but would be good to have some sort of confirmation. Secondly, I vaguely remember hearing somewhere that the ST's and SA's are relevant only to the country in which they were taken. Is this true? If so there wouldn't be much point me doing them here. Thanks for any help.
The Australian system uses the same exams as the UK for CT1 to CT8, but the remainder of the exams follow a completely different system. If you've already started on the remaining exams you'd probably be better off finishing the UK qualification.
IoAA website here www.actuaries.asn.au Sorry can't help you further as I'm not that familiar with the uk system myself!
I moved to Australia 2yrs ago. I was writing the UK exams in South Africa and moved to Oz with 1 ST and 1 SA to go. I continued writing the UK exams in Australia - the Australian system is quite different to the UK. There are part 1 papers (which are the same as the UK CT1 - CT8), part 2 papers (which are like the CT9, CA2 and CA3) and part 3 papers (which are similar to the STs), and the Fellowship paper I think is harder in the UK than any equivalent Australian paper. If you move to Oz, I think you'll only be exempted from CT1 - CT8, which means you have to write all the other Oz papers. If you only have 3 papers to go, you may be qualified by the time you move here. In that case you need to be an Accredited member of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia for 6 months and have a certain amount of work experience in Oz before you can be an FIAA.
Thanks actuary123. Sounds like I could up sticks and go with say one exam left then; I'd just have to carry on with the final UK system exam and sit it in Oz. I'll still probably try and get them out the way in England but worth knowing that I don't actually have to.
