Hello, Could anybody please give me a little extra info to what is in the core reading for there two ART things. The detail in there is a little scarce. Also, there seem to be a lot of question that bear no resemblance to core reading all over CA1 and it is doing my head in now. I'll get my coat
Hi, As I understand it, discounted covers are based on the idea that not all institutions are required to be equally prudent about the value of their liabilities. Discounted covers specifically make use of situations where an institution has to hold provisions for the un-discounted value of future liabilities. An example I was given was that some general insurers cannot discount some short-term liabilities. If reinsurers are able to hold lower reserves for the discounted value of these liabilities, then they can offer reinsurance on terms that are very attractive to the original insurer compared to reserving for the liabilities themselves. I think integrated covers are just reinsurance treaties that allow reinsurance to be ceded at any time over a number of future years on a number of different lines of business. Compared to having seperate treaties for different lines of business, and renegotiating each year, this is probably cheaper, simpler and removes the risk of renegotiating on less favourable terms. Hope this helps. Please someone let me know if I've got something wrong here. Yup, I agree. I don't think the core reading and ActEd notes prepare you very well for the exam. Having prepared for a resit, I'd advise anyone doing the course to use just use flashcards and ASET. The teaching and learning of CA1 would be much more painless if someone had the intellectual honesty to admit that the course has very little to do with application. For example many of the answers in the ASET will refer back to similar questions in earlier CA1 and 300-series papers - so it is bookwork, it's just that the bookwork is in past papers rather than in the notes - great system isn't it? Regardless of the specifics of the question there are common themes and lots of questions have very similar answers. The trick seems to be to generalise these answers for use in future papers. I'd bet that CA1 could be passed by a neural network with no understanding of grammar - just associations between words in the questions and words in the answers. More than any exam I've sat since GCSEs, CA1 feels like primarily an exam in passing exams. It's what has been called "pancake knowledge" - it does little more than mention loads of different topics without developing any depth of understanding in any of them. This ART question you've asked highlights the problem.
As a tutor, this made me chuckle. I think the Flashcards would seem like a rather random collection of revision pages without having the background context of the Core Reading or the ActEd notes!
IMO it's being able to "apply" the (albeit high level/low detail) knowledge that makes the difference between a pass and a fail. Maybe this could be classed as "exam technique" but it's still a big enough jump from the CT's to cause most ppl to struggle.... i wouldn't want to go from a CT level of "techniques" to an SA level of application in one jump! For that reason I'd suggest that the tutorials are really important... and that comes from someone who struggled to go to lectures at uni and use them at all for the CTs! (you can pay me later Anna!)
