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Non-UK student attempting SA4

I

Ivanhoe

Member
Hello,

I work in a developing nation in Pensions and I intend to take SA4. I have an exemption in one ST and I have passed ST2. In this regard, I had the following questions:

1. How difficult would SA4 prove to be for a Pensions student working in a developing nation? Is UK pension too difficult to understand?
2. How much time would it require for one to go through ST4 course notes? Is going through the past question papers for ST4 necessary?
3. How much extra reading is required for SA4? (To offer some background, I unsuccessfully attempted SA5 as I felt that some questions required quite a bit of background reading. The SA5 paper in Sep 2015 had hardly any question related to the core reading. Hence, I am contemplating switching to SA4)

Could anyone please respond?:)

Regards,
 
Hi Ivanhoe

Some thoughts from me below. However it would be great if others reading this thread could chip in with their thoughts.

SA4 is UK-specific and contains a fair bit of detail about UK legislation. So it will be tougher for people who do not have experience of the UK regime. However, there are a fair number of students in that position. And the material is not too difficult to understand. The key thing is to learn the Core Reading really well.

ST4 is assumed knowledge for SA4. I think it would be worth getting a copy of the ST4 Course Notes and reading through them quickly. If there is a lot of material that is completely new to you, then it is worth going through them a bit more carefully.

Generally, the SA4 Course Notes and Core Reading recap on the principles in ST4 before going into more detail. So it is probably not worth spending ages of ST4. However. two ST4 chapters that are not recapped in SA4 and so worth spending more time on:

1) The sponsor covenant chapter - sponsor covenant is really topical in the UK and gets tested in many SA4 exams - so definitely worth learning the Core Reading here

2) The funding methods chapter - make sure you are comfortable in particular with the Projected Unit Method and the Attained Age method, which are the two most commonly used funding methods in the UK.

I don't think you need to practise lots of ST4 exam questions - better to focus on SA4.

Generally the SA4 exams focus fairly closely on the Core Reading. Wider reading can be really helpful in building your understanding and you will find a Topical Issues thread on this forum which lists some topics which might be worth exploring.

Finally, bear in mind that we do offer Live Online tutorials for SA4, which might be useful for you? More information can be found here:
http://acted.co.uk/online_classroom_live.html

I hope that helps?
Best wishes
Gresham
 
Hi I agree with what Gresham Arnold said.

I am also from a developing country - Zimbabwe and we have very few DB plans here such that for me to understand most of the technical material on funding methods, I had to make up my own data and vary things such as average ages of the scheme members, interest rates, salary growth etc. I even had to look at the DB valuations that are posted on most UK local authority websites.

By virtue of not being in UK, you are starting off at a major disadvantage, the British change something in their pension system almost every single year, even if they don't change anything, someone presents proposals to change something..and its stuff like that that finds its way into the exam paper needing you to apply your knowledge to an unfamiliar scenario.

last october, the majority of the paper was made up of DC and Collective DC type of schemes and I really thought I was lucky to get a such a paper because almost all the schemes in my country are run as Collective DC schemes. Its only when results came, that I realised that I was wrong. So having outside UK experience in pensions may be another weakness if you fail to tailor that experience into something the markers want.

In other years, the SA4 paper came with numerical questions...those can end up being a lottery if you do not have extensive DB experience and considerable past paper practice because its so easy to make a mistake or fail to use the right approximation..so make sure you look into that. Even the examination reports state that candidates either really do well on a numerical question..or perform so badly.

lastly, another topic to watch out for is the one on accounting methods. If you have more of DC experience, than DB that chapter can really take some time to get your head around.

cheers and all the best on what you decide.
 
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