General advise

Hi All,

I'd like to make public my ongoing failure. I've written the SP8 pricing a total of 7 times.

The first two times, I wrote without any preparations and ended up getting in the low 50s.

The next 4 times, I failed by either 2 or 3 marks depending on the diet. I took this as a learning and tried to improve.

This time, I got a 53. I don't know what the pass mark is... But i'm absolutely crushed to my core. I've always taken failure on the chin but this time I broke down. I had given it my all in this paper and had basically felt that I'd done well.

I'd like to ask some advise... I feel like i've tried everything. I've done reviews of my answers with the answer sheet, I've purchased the ASET and compared my answers against them and I've attempted the past papers so many times I now know a lot of the answers to the questions by heart.

Advise I'd like:
1. Am I kidding myself? Should I just abandon SP8 and think about another specialization?
2. What am I missing? Is there something else that I should be doing?

 

Are you doing past papers in timed condition and then marking yourself? I failed SP2 a few times and then focused my revision on this. I probably did 10 years' worth of past papers in timed conditions, by the time the exam came round my speed of answering questions and the quality of my answers was on point, this ensured me a solid pass.

 

Timed conditions.

I have written 5 years' papers (2014-2018) papers total) at least 3 times. I've attempted the 2019 papers 2 additional times and the 2020 papers maybe 2 times.

Once I write a paper i compare the answers with ASET and the answer booklet and I see where an improvement can be made.

 

Hi padasala,

I found it really useful to do older exams, and always keep track of the questions I got wrong. Then after a few weeks, revisit those questions and do them under timed conditions. The idea is to ensure you're learning from your mistakes and that you're understanding where you're going wrong. Try to discuss questions with colleagues to see things from a different perspective as well to broaden your thinking. I also suggest you apply for exam counselling - you may just be going wrong with exam technique.

Don't give up - we've all been there!

 

There are at least 10 years worth of exam papers for SP8/ST8, don't limited yourself to post 2014 onwards.

 

I feel that writing older papers would not necessarily help. I have noticed the change in the type/content of questions that get asked.

Im more worried about the fact that I'm coming close, but apparently not close enough. Not sure how to resolve that particular hurdle.

 

If the type of question is different it will make your mind think differently and perhaps help in these exams, for all you know a question from 2010 to 2014 or even part of a question maybe have come up in 1 of the 7 papers that you sat and that could be difference between pass and fail.

Have you done tutorials?

 

Asking for your marks by question through SAR, along with the mark scheme and actually having your scripts for the last three sittings may help to identify where you're going wrong - be that on particular topic or question type (e.g. "Describe...").

 

I'm doing the tutorials for SP7. I purchased the offline tutorials for SP8.

I see your point. I did dip into the older question papers for the reinsurance and cat model problems (though I did not do the other problems)

 

I have the SARs for 5 papers.

I used to struggle with data and RI questions. This attempt was supposed to have fixed that.

Also describe and comment. Though I specifically attempted a lot of the describe and comment questions again.

But what would you advise? go through the SARs with the ASET again?

 

I failed SP7 last September and managed to pass this April. For me i definitely benefited from doing older papers - the ASET ones are helpful in that they break down the answers well, but if you’ve already done the papers multiple times and have memorised the answers then that won’t be really testing you any more. The question content hasn’t changed massively since 2010 so you could at least go back and try 2010-2013.

I also requested my SAR and self-marked my exam script. Given it’s online now you should still have your scripts so download the marking and honestly look to see what points you think you got for each question. Then compare your self-marks with your SAR and see if there are any differences.

For me I had a few questions where I thought I should have gotten full marks, but my SAR showed I had dropped some. Therefore there was clearly a problem in how I was communicating my answer, as the markers weren’t understanding my points and giving me the credit. I also noticed I was dropping some “easy” marks for not stating the obvious e.g. new line of business = limited data for reserving. I was IMPLYING it with my answer (such as by suggesting the use of an ELR method which is better when there is limited historical data) but not outright STATING it, so I lost marks.

I then did older past papers, for me 2010-2013, NOT TIMED and just focused on exam technique. Once I thought my technique was improved I then picked a few papers where I’d performed the worst in my first attempts, and redid those timed.

That brought me up from 56 in Sept to 85 in April. Hopefully something in there was helpful for you - best of luck with the next sitting.

 

Hi padasala,

I'm really sorry to hear about your situation, I would be totally demoralized too if I am in your position. However let me share you my learning technique.

For me, I learn more from past paper practices than the notes itself. I practice the past papers many rounds especially those 2014 ones and after. The earlier versions however, I tried them too but not worrying too much about it considering parts of it are out of the syllabus.

I think the most useful trick, you might have heard of this 101 times already, is to use proper headers.
I know it is easier said than done, but really helps you to deal with massive single-part questions (eg: 20marks one-off)
I did all the life insurance papers, and the common headers that work well for me are:

1. Different parties
   Insurer, regulators, distributors, underwriters, staff, shareholders, credit rating agencies...
   If something changes, how would each of them feel about the change?
   
   
2. Different departments of the insurance company
   An easy way to include everything is to imagine you are in your work office, walking from the top to the bottom floor of your office. Which team will you bump into? It may remind you of:
   Marketing, Product development, Investments, Reserving, Reporting (EEV), Pricing, Modellers, Distributors, IT systems, Admin staff...
   If the insurer wants to do something differently, what would each of them like to say?
   If something bad happens, who would you first approach? (imagine how would it look like if it happened in your work place)
   
   
3. Acronyms
   This list is not only useful for bookwork questions. Very often by just browsing through the list, it reminds you what could you talk about.

Another thing when attempting past papers is, try not to just memorise all the bullet points.
Look at what you missed and try to think how would you have thought about that point, and then use this as a technique to derive these points.
If it is too unrealistic to think about that point, then ignore it; there are often more points on the ASET than required to score fully.

Hope you will find this helpful. Feel free to message me if you want to talk about it.

Thanks,
Trevor

 

thanks for this. I'll definitely try it out.

I am giving SP7 this time. Is it ok if I message you privately for some tips?

 

Hi Trevor,

I will definitely take you up on the offer and reach out to you.

I didn't mean to memorize the answers/bullet points... it's something that just happened automatically due to me doing the paper a number of times.