I should say now that this is a bit of a complaining post. I know I complain a lot, but for what it's worth, I think it's justifiable to feel annoyed with the exams at this stage. I mean why does the profession put the slogan "making financial sense of the future" on everything. The courses don't teach nearly enough economic or financial theory to enable actuaries to do this. Does anyone else find the slogan pretentious and annoying? And what about the people who enter the profession thinking that this is what they will learn how to do, and get halfway through the exams only to realise that it ain't gonna happen? They'll be justifiably annoyed. It's certainly how I feel. Secondly, when you've got through the CTs, you can look back and realise what heavy-weather was made of teaching a few basic concepts. For example, the majority of CT1 and CT5 seems to have been rendered obsolete by the invention of the spreadhseet! The only real concept on both these courses is that future cashflows can be discounted! So some of the CTs seem like a huge amount of work for the increase in understanding that they provide. What's even more annoying is the sudden change in exams once you get beyond the CTs. Would it not be a good idea to make this into more of a gradual change, rather than this sudden jump? Furthermore, it seems that exam technique becomes far more important in the later exams - which is probably not what most people expect from professional exams. I'm thinking of things like interpretting questions, judging how much to write, associating words in the questions with parts of the course. And finally, how much use are the later exams in practice. To me they seem too vague and book-worky to be of any use in practice. We are given lists about modelling and risk-management, but it's just words at the end of the day - yes, we know we should weigh up the costs vs the advantages of mitigating a risk, but how on earth is this to be done in practice. The CA1 course often talks about risk without considering who it effects and why they would benefit from it being mitigated. As I understand it. this is something that can be considered very nicely within the financial theory that is used elsewhere in the course, but the notes simply don't go there (and no, I don't mean taking a simplified theory as gospel - looking at the limitations of the theory can provide some useful insights). I'm not saying the course should be extended, but what is there should make sense. Students can waste a lot of time thinking that they don't understand something, when vital explanation is missing from the course. Perhaps this kind of explanation was left out of CA1 to make space for more lists in the earlier chapters where we learn about why actuaries are so uniquely great! And doesn't is always seem that the actuarial profession responds to any criticism by saying things like "we need to become better communicators so that people understand how great we are" (see the editorial in last months edition of the Actuary). Most people will see this as evading the criticism, rather than properly responding to it. Sorry if that was a bit of a rant. I hope some of it can be seen as constructive criticism of the institute. Sam
Things i have learned so far without sitting exams yet are time value of money and presenting highly technical work in a not so technical way. These both sum up the phrase making sense of the future no?
