What did everyone think of the paper? I found some of the wording in Q1 quite confusing and wasn't sure of the exact requirements. Time was an issue for me aswell, mainly due to spending too long trying to figure out the question!
To be honest I thought it was not bad at all: one big reserving question - complete with triangles - and a pricing question on flood peril were both things I could answer from my own working experience. This worries me, because when I think I've done OK I've usually failed! I also had time problems, mostly due to writing too much on the explanations of reserving techniques in Q1, so I left myself with not enough time to do Q2 justice. Which bits of Q1 did you find confusing?
I think I was just rushing through. At the time I was trying to figure out if the reserving actuary had already adjusted the reserves for the changes mentioned in the question, or whether the figures were unadjusted. Then I was uncertain of the requirements for effects (part a) and distortions (part b) of (vii), and distinguishing between the two. Looking at the question after the exam it seems to make more sense, but I was concerned about going down the wrong route at the time and probably spent far too long thinking through the wording of it...
As I understood it, the first part was talking about an analysis done by someone outside the company, and all they had access to was a single triangle of paid claims, year by year, of all business, i.e. motor and household added together, which is all the company published. Obviously that's pretty meaningless, and the second part was referring to the insurer's own reserving actuary, and asking us to compare what additional info that they would have access to and use for their own (internal) reserving (e.g. separate motor from household, split by perils, use higher frequency than annual and so on). At least that's what I hope they were asking for! All of this was before the changes were made. I was also confused by (vii) parts (a) and (b), but if I remember rightly: part (a) was asking you what effects, given the various stated changes made in the way the business is run, would you expect to see in the triangles (i.e. you don't need to look at the triangles to answer this part), and part (b) was asking what effects you do see in the triangles, and whether they were a result of the changes or for some other reason (e.g. there was what looked like bad storm experience in one year for the household triangle). Now I'm going to try and forget about it until 20th December!
