Losing WBS exemption

Hi everyone, the latest unwelcome development is that the IFoA are taking away the Work Based Skills exemption for those of us who joined the profession before June 2004. This has been sneaked into the curriculum change, by subjecting us to PPD.

For all this time we've been on the understanding that to qualify required passing the examinations but now they are adding this extra burden. They are moving the goalpost and making qualification harder to obtain.

I can see no good reason for this development. Those of us who've joined prior to June 2004 will have worked in actuary for a long time and should continue to be exempt from this requirement.

This could also constitute indirect age discrimination.

The IFoA are not answering my questions on these matters, so if they've provided an explanation to anyone else of who made this decision and why then please share it here.

It's about time actuaries found a backbone and stood up to these increasingly unnecessary requirements and shifting the goalposts from the IFoA.

I expect there will be people who will now end up passing the last exam but will be denied qualification as the IFoA will demand PPD and a Fellow sign-off. Not everyone who gets their final exam pass result will necessarily be in a role where this is possible.

 

I'm sure we would if we agreed with you - but perhaps we respectfully don't.
It seems to be more unfair to me that those who happened to start before 2004 (a long time ago) have been exempt for so long.

 

Their website states:
"The aim of the work-based skills (WBS) requirement is to help you to demonstrate that you have put into practice the actuarial theory you gain through taking the exams."

We must wonder how people can survive 13+ years of working in roles with "actuarial" in the job title without somehow putting into practice anything gained through taking the exams.

 

true - but equally if they have, then WBS/PPD requirements should be pretty easy to meet. I think passing the exams is likely to be tougher. I'm sure you'll be able to meet the requirements if and when required.
Good luck

 

In principle, a change of exam system that takes place every few years with the IoA should not put anybody in a position of loosing exams or exemptions.

 

Not really, not everyone may be in a work situation to do PPD. Why should they be denied qualification because of that if they've passed all the exams as they've been told is all they had to do? It's shifting the goalpost after promising qualifying times wouldn't increase. It gives no credit for past work experience, which is grossly unfair bearing in mind those with exemptions joined pre-2004. IFoA should do the right thing and just ask for people's CVs and put an end to WBS/PPD.

 

Did you know that if you take the Swiss qualification you only have to study for perhaps 3 years after which point you can just write to the Institute, check a few other boxes and then obtain the U.K. Actuarial qualification which would normally take 7-8 years or even longer in my case! How fair do you think that is?

They new system means that I'll also have to render exams which I previously passed as absolutely worthless. As pointed out by Vicki this is not fair.

Following your same logic: What about all the actuaries that qualified years ago? Why don't they also have to take the additional exams imposed by the IFoA?

 

Indeed. The IFoA say that passing their exams are necessary to be conferred Fellowship as you need to demonstrate competence.

Students need to wise up and ask them what competencies they have successfully demonstrated in the exams that they've passed which are now suddenly being declared worthless? It seems to me by rendering your exam pass worthless because you haven't passed some other exam also, that not only is this grossly unfair and that you should ask for your money back for every expense incurred on passing that exam, but that also the IFoA are effectively asking you to show your competency TWICE in order to get the qualification. Surely there is recourse under the equality act here in terms of age discrimination and suchlike.

 

In my view it is ok to loose a WBS exemption but it is not fair that the IoA does not accept work experience retrospectively when the new system comes into play. Did you know that people with years of experience will be required to prove that they have 36 months of work experience starting from August 2017? What was the point of doing any actuarial work before that date if it cannot be accounted for in the new system? It does not make any sense...and is not fair.

 

Yes, what's emerging is (not that they want to tell me about it) that we're not just losing WBS exemption but from September 2018 the IFoA's PPD scheme completely disregards all your work experience prior to Sept 2017.

For someone who may work as a contractor and only get say 6 months a year worth of work, then to get 3 years recorded PPD they couldn't be conferred until September 2023 even if they had passed their final exam December 2018... just how unfair do these situations need to be until the IFoA start doing the right thing ?

 

Yes, this is exactly what I have been told - from September 2018 everybody transitions to the new regime of PPD and none of the past experience will be accounted for. If you didn't manage to close your last exam by August 2018 you will be required to write 36 months of PPD, which takes you to qualification date of September 2020 (if you started writing PPD as of this month - September 2017).
I think there might be some additional timing issues based on the month of joining the IoA and subsequent anniversaries as mentioned on the website. It seems that the new system will defer the qualification for some people by as much as 2 years of purely writing the PPD. Wow!

 

Furthermore when we compare with those who come to the UK with a benefit of the MRA and start their year's work experience from December 2017 and complete it December 2018 and they get FIA. They don't have to do PPD or CPD. They won't have to wait until 2020. Their past 2 years work experience will be acknowledged whilst ours won't. The discrimination going on here is absolutely shocking.

 

At least you got told something. I've asked the IFoA on 10 occassions now and they still can't confirm. So a potential 2 years of wait till qualification and 3 years of administrative burden in doing the PPD in the first place.... does no one else find this unfair?

 

It seems they're not so keen to confirm the discriminatory cliff edges coming up that people will experience and just let people sleepwalk into them. This is disgraceful.

 

Is the issue here that they want relatively up-to-date experience. I think the PPD will be fairly similar to CPD. If you qualify you still have to do so much CPD each year. If you are a student for longer than average they want you to keep up-to-date with current practice and keep maintaining a log of up-to-date PPD.
If this is the case then it seems reasonable to me You could argue it both ways and may not agree with it, but accusing the IFoA of discrimination seems a tad unfair.

 

Then that helps our case not yours. There's no good reason to dismiss people's work experience pre-Sept 2017 if when they pass their last exam in December 2018 they could qualify and do CPD for Fellows straight away. That's not what's in store for people. They have to record PPD until September 2020 before being allowed Fellowship.

 

OK there's updated details now on the PPD webpage so it doesn't look like the cliff edge is what we had previously been told it was but still it's unclear to me how this works. For anyone not in continuous PPD recording due to gaps in work their qualification will be delayed despite the IFoA's statement "The transition from one work experience scheme to another is not intended to extend the time to qualify.". What a mess!
https://www.actuaries.org.uk/studyi...d-professional-development-ppd-september-2017

 

Another thing not mentioned here (that's what you always need to look out for) is how much of PPD is like WBS i.e. having read the WBS requirements, people were meant to record this up until they passed their final exam. So even if you started recording it September 2004 but still haven't passed your final exam, by now you'd have recorded 13 years' worth, even though the minimum requirement is 3 years. I really don't understand why actuaries haven't stood up to this requirement years ago it seems utterly unfair!

 

It's very important that people ask the IFoA to directly endorse your work experience as it stands, as otherwise you can't assume they will and could find yourself not getting the credit towards PPD you had hoped (I'm referring to those who are exempt from WBS). I showed them 12 years of my actuarial work experience and the "unofficial" feedback I got was a disgrace. They essentially tried to dismiss my work experience as:

Somehow they missed out on that actuarial umbrella of Solvency 2 reporting, TCF remediation work, S2 documentation, asset share and bonus work, the IT package was Prophet (rather actuarial don't you think?), every single job title for 12 years saying "actuarial" with commensurate rates of pay, working at large established insurers' actuarial departments etc. but still the IFoA can't figure out if I did work that's actuarial enough for completing Form A. Perhaps for me I need to be a Chief Actuary before they let me qualify.

Indeed, it must be some kind of miracle that anyone gives me an actuarial job when the IFoA can't see my work experience as being actuarial enough?

This is rather ironic when they defended their Nov 2016 Q1 CA3 question as being actuarial because it was "data analysis" with the context being a "beverage company" yet couldn't tell me how many beverage companies in this country put their employees through the IFoA exams. I guess what's actuarial to the IFoA depends on what they want it to be when it suits them.

Don't assume anything about what the IFoA might accept. Get everything checked out and confirmed on paper/email.

 

I imagine the group of people that this affects i.e. those studying for 13+ years with still no qualification is fairly small. Why should that group be exempt anyway?

The IFoA reserves the right to maintain a modern curriculum and if that involves PPD requirements then put the extra work in and get it done.

I for one am proud to be a member of such a dynamic institute and welcome the changes.

 

If IFoA so dynamic and modern then why are they being so awkward and struggling to treat fairly these people after telling them since they joined they only needed to have 3 years work experience?