I'm interested to see what people thought of this... if there is anyone out there that sat it! The second question was a pain for me - 20 marks and I spent over an hour on it (oops!). It bugs me that I didn't use the info on expense reserves but I'm hoping that was a red herring. What did people think? Thanks L*
Overall, I thought the exam was ok but struggled with the second question. I couldn't decide if the Mathematical Reserves should include the expenses or not - maybe that's why they said state your assumptions. I think it's unfair to have a 20 mark question when you can't be very sure of how accurate your answer is. I don't think it tested your knowledge or understanding of ST1 except in the fourth parth. Questions like this seem to be a feature of ST1 - Q4 A06 and Q3 A08 spring to mind...
Q2 was not difficult by any means but was a time killer. I was struggling for time as I spent around 45 min on Q2. Apart from that it was a fair paper but one QN like this is enough to spoil the quality of the answers in the other questions in a paper due to time pressure!
I did state an assumption about the treatment of the "expense and other" reserve but think that even if you left it out it would have only been worth half a mark. I'm glad I wasn't the only one to spend too much time on this question; I feel that when a question like this comes up for so many marks you need to ensure you score well as the majority probably will. Despite spending over an hour on q2 I finished the paper, I'm not sure I would have added much to the other questions given an extra half an hour... not sure whether that's a good thing or not though!
