September '06

So what did you guys think? I was a bit surprised: No slide presentation! I thought the questions were quite straightforward. No difficult terms to explain (like APR in previous papers). I wrote well. Hopefully the examiner is in a good mood when he marks my script. This exam is soooo subjective.

Good luck with the rest of your studies.

Erik.

 

Looks like we wrote our threads at almost exactly the same time!

I thought the paper was challenging but fair.

Would have liked to do a presentation as I'm good at them - but life doesn't always give you what you want.

I think I did ok/good on q1 & bad on q2 - so will have to wait and see!

Q2 - How do you explain compund discounting ? My answer - you don't!!!

 

the eternity of CA3

well, i didn't also, but mentioned smth about not earning interest - not very happy with the outcome, though
Anyway, congrats if you managed with q1 - i really got knocked down with how to state the obvious is a systematic manner
so, with CA3 there are only two options - either too complicated, or too obvious ...

 

Compund discounting

I didn't really discuss compound discounting either, mainly because I was really pushed for time and the word limit was killing me. I just mentioned that the money paid would need to be reduced as we would not have as much time to earn the money required to pay her monthly payments. Quite rubbish really, but the best I could do given I'd left it so late.

I wish I had wrote something better about it though ... could have kicked myself afterwards!

 

ha ha ha - is that what you put down on your paper!!!

 

No, I copped out with the answer "if you settle early there is a £23,000 early settlement charge - this charge reduces the closer you get to policy expiry" or some sort of nonsense.

Also, I thought I had 30 seconds left when the invigilator said STOP WRITING so I didn't even get to write 'Yours Sincerely' - so that's at least 1% dropped for a start!!

 

I thought that the exam seemed fairly straight forward on the first run through. However, when I got in to it, I ran in to all sorts of problems.

With Q1, the main problem I had was how in depth to go on about the weighting difference between market and actual company member profile. In the end basically wrote out a calc so no doubt I fluffed that question.

Q2 was a type of product which I didnt even recognise so had a little difficulty putting all my faith in what the student wrote (even though apparently he was spot on). I agree that the compound discounting was tricky, very tricky. I also had a hard time explaining that although the income stream would increase, it had in fact been increasing since 1997 even though it hadnt been in payment.....er unless I misunderstood something.

Once again, no doubt I failed. 6th time lucky?

 

time pressured

I over-ran ~20min on Q1 and was not able to complete my Q2 conclusion and sign-off properly.

Did anyone else feel time pressured?

 

I had a bit of time pressure. Finished just on time. Just looked through once. No time to count words, though I know I'm probably under. I think the product in the second question was just an annuity certain. I just said that we had to express each future payment to her in today's money terms. Then I explained that if she had $100 today and earn interest at 5% per annum this would be worth $105 in one year's time. The other way around, if you want $105 in one year's time, you will need $100 today. And so on. I didn't go into compounds. I thought it would unnecisarily complicate matters.

Now it's just fingers crossed hey.

Cheers.

 

I found the time ok - I actually had time to count my words etc at the end, so fairly happy. Or maybe I did something wrong... Questions weren't really anything unexpected, and you're right Erik, questions seemed straightforward.

I think I explained the compound interest bit by sort of brushing over it - I think I said something like "we take into account the fact that money earns interest over time, so if the money payable to you were to remain in our fund, it would earn enough interest to pay you all the benefits as set out in the schedule". Btu I may have broken that up itno 2 sentences.

I was slightly confused with the benefits she was getting - I wasn't sure whether it continued to increase when it was being paid to her, or whether it would increase until payments had to be made at which point it remains the same for the res tof the term. I think I assumed the former in the end.

As for Q1, as with FatSam, I wasn't sure how much detail to go into with the weighting difference. In the end I think I decided since the quesiton said something like "discuss briefly the market data" or something similar, I decided to draw a bar chart instead!

Didn't help that I was drugged up on paracetamol during the exam!

Anyway I do agree that marking can be quite subjective and depends on the question as well - I got a borderline/fail for one mock and a pass for my other mock - i did them one day after the other!

 

I think it was a fair paper. Definitely preferred it to some of the past papers. Mainly because I understood what they actualyl wanted - where some of the past papers were hard to know what exactly we should emphasise etc. Interesting no slide slow...but then the previus 3 exams in a row all had them so maybe no surprise.

I pretty much ignored compound discounting too! (just said goes up 3% each year). Generally I thought Q2 was quite nice. Q1 was a more awkward. Was difficult to know how much detail to go into about selection. I was tempted to start saying that, even without the people with pre existing conditions, there would be more selection by having a single flat rate. So older ppl would have good value and would buy it, while young people bad value for money so not buy the option. I started writing about that and then realised it would take me way over the word limit and scrubbed it all out! I dont think anyone else included it so we probably werent supposed to. Ditto I presume we were meant to sugget the higher flat price to incorporate more older people, but not actually suggest varying the prices for different ages? I tend to overcomplicate matters - so made myself not - so i hope I havent oversimplified for once...

Only a few months to wait! Good luck for those of you (like me) who still have more this session!

 

Ding ! Ding!
i think it's a hugely valid point so I included it (without having a clue if i should have)

 

I actually did suggest different prices for over 45's and under 45's or alternatively a higher price for all ages. With this exam you never know! And with my luck I'm never right either.

Cheers

 

hmmm now Im beginning to wish I had after all!

Now in an ideal world (since my writing under the scored out bit is perfectly legible) the examinors may notice I thought of it and give me some partial credit for that! But somehow I doubt it...

Its difficult because almost every past paper I ended up including things I thought were important...but then the examiners report said not to as not important! It would be ironic to say the least if this one time I were to go the other way...

Hmmm...oh well. No use worrying about these things! I can worry about my CT8 exam tomorrow instead!

 

good luck Greg mate -
personally I wouldnt hold any stock in anything I have to say on this subject - I've already failed it twice - I thought question 1 was absolutely horrendous. I've absolutely zero confidence that I've passed - just highlighted that I fell for that thing - oh yeah and I think I was just over 10% past the word limit so totally echoing your comments.

 

I think discussion of young vs old members is a must. Do not think you should talk about people with pre-existing conditions.

 

I failed it this time! Everyone else in my office passed it. Boo hoo

 

sorry to hear this. check your private message

 

I have, and replied but you're exceeding your mail limit so you can't recieve my mail.

....all those messages we've been swapping!

 

try again in one minute will try to delete. was deniese spelt "Deniese"?

 

It was spelt Daneeyse....NOT! (that's not even funny).

Deniese was spelt Deniese.

.... the suspension is getting too much!