The actuarial student and the curse of the FA result

This is the time of the year where memories from the (not-so) distant past resurface. The times when I was a student struggling with the actuarial exams. It is surprising how fast you can bury that time of your life behind you once qualified, but seeing recent posts of all those who passed, my immediate thoughts are also to those deserving actuarial students, who work very long hours, are bright, study as much as they can, but seem to get stuck with that FA*. 

Note: There was a time where you had a measure of failure, FA, FB, FC and FD....but the FA was the worst one. I do not follow much the recent education process, but this style of rating may have been dropped where the pass mark is shown instead. I will stick to the term FA for the rest of the article, as it does hit home with me, and represents the "nearly good, but not good enough...again" feeling.

As it was also the case back then, it comes that time of the year as a student, where you seem to belong to one of a few groups. One that posts (well-deserved I am sure) self-congratulatory LinkedIn (or other social media) posts about passing the exams, or those who pass and do not post it or being in the other silent group where you would like to be happy for your friends and colleagues who will get (another) promotion and (another) pay-rise, but you find yourself struggling to see past your own FA...again!

You may also be (un)fortunate to be working in a big company, as I did in the past, where the student managers not only sent a company-wide email listing who passed, but spent time deriving and including some very drilling analytics, such as a grid of all exams vs student names, and smiley faces on all passes, but unhappy red faces next to all fails (past and present) to top-up the humiliation. It was not uncommon for senior management to not even speak or engage to those who had unhappy faces next to their names. It was terrible.

Irrespective of your own employer's approach to dealing with success/failure, you still think to yourself, "why FA again?", "what am I doing wrong?", "I studied really hard", "I work hard, and I know my stuff well". When you look at the examiner’s report, you think "where did they find these answers in the course?", then, the doubt gives way to a bit of bitterness and some conspiracy thinking, "33% pass-rate again? the examiners are set to fail me", or "I am good and/or better at work, why did I not pass?".

Having had some exemptions myself in the past, I also found facing the additional "you have cheated your way through exams", or "you did not pass the exams properly" type of mentality of "purists" who only passed exams via direct exams.

Of course, when you mix all the above together, you do develop some self-doubt and complexes, and that builds some pressure which at some point can break you psychologically. The exams failures are the elephant in the room that nobody confronts or wants to confront. You do realise after a while that this is a brutal industry that has far-reaching implications on your mentality and mental health. Your whole life may be on-hold till you pass exams, and the way colleagues treat you or look at you can depended on your exam record.

I was left with two exams (life specialist and life applications ST2 and SA2 at the time) for quite a bit of time, so I was fed-up, and I took time off from exams, and concentrated on working, but many years later I found myself faced with the difficulties of having to prove myself as non-qualified, even for things I would be doing over and over again, and I could be particularly good at. Being an Associate was also proving to be a blank title as either some employers did not know what AIA means, or some international organisations did not officially recognise it as anything meaningful.

Inspired by a close person to me who had a similar experience, passed and gave me a few tips, is when I decided I would try revisiting the exams with a clear head. My thoughts below relate to the later subjects requiring more critical thinking and less technical/mathematical answers, and are also based on the life insurance exams, but I am sure they translate to the other subjects too. For the earlier subjects, where the answer is either right or wrong, it is a matter of course work and maths. For the later subjects though, the approach is and must be quite different.

I spent some time reviewing my old ways, changing them, and then it happened. I passed my last exams on my first attempt since I restarted exams, and to my surprise I found both papers "easy". I even enjoyed the exam papers! After receiving the results, I started wondering why I did not do this a few years back, but sometimes you need some maturity in your thinking to achieve things and to have one person that will say the right thing to you at the right time.

This is my opportunity to be that helpful person to you, if it counts for anything. You should believe that passing the exams can be very easy, if you do the right things. Luck of course plays a part, but all things being equal, preparation is key.

You are maybe wondering why I am writing this. I assure you it is not to gloat or pat myself on the shoulder, but it is to point out two things I found that I think may help you on your journey to qualification, if you too are haunted by the curse of the FA:

1. You are not alone in how you are feeling
2. As hard as it may seem, there is no conspiracy to pass exams, it has nothing to do with others, it is all down to you, and you can do it.

To demonstrate this to you, I will follow the actuarial control cycle, which as pointless and boring as it initially sounded to me as a "course item", it is what I ended up using:

Defining the Problem

The problem is very easy to define. Turn the FA into a P. The main things to ask yourself are:

• if this is the first time, it could be luck, will you try again?
• if this is not the first time you failed, what did you do differently to last time?
• how many hours did you study for the subject?
• how many past papers did you actually analyse?
• what is your exam technique?
• do you actually want to be an actuary?

Luck is hard to quantify or predict, but you can box it in with the right preparation. So let us look at the rest of the items in the list.

What did you do different from last time?

As others stated, you cannot reasonably expect to get a different outcome when you do exactly the same thing over and over again. So, the first thing to do is to accept that you will have to do something differently. It is not about being your fault or that of others. It is about preparing in the right way, and that may mean that you have to accept a change.

How many hours did you study?

One section of the actuarial notes I never bothered reading before was the introduction part containing the study guide and syllabus. This I subsequently found had some very useful information, including:

• the recommended study hours per subject and sitting
• the learning objectives
• the study approach and some other useful tips

If the answer to this question is no, then you are missing a very valuable tool. If you found you did not match or exceed the recommended hours, then you should think that all other students who read this section, may actually spend that much time on the course, so that will put you in a big disadvantage.

Some gifted students can do this in much less time than the recommended, but it is all about averages. I accepted I was not as gifted as some others out there when it comes to actuarial exams, so I was prepared to work a bit harder.

The learning objectives are also a very useful master-list of themes, that can help generate ideas. You should also consider that the examiners were also students as you, and the learning objectives are central in assessing you in the exams. My advice is therefore that you should read the introduction part of your course notes very carefully.

Did you do any past papers?

Now, some people may argue that you need to do past papers under exam conditions, but I did not do that as I did not have the time. However, for some people this is important. In any case, past exam papers contain the key to understanding the right exam technique.

If you found yourself not looking at past papers, or just reading them passively, you will have missed an invaluable resource and an opportunity to prepare. The question of "where did examiners find these points in the course work" is answered very easily once you spent some quality time with the past papers. In some cases, the answer to future questions lies there in front of you in the past papers. My advice is therefore that you go through the past papers and analyse them thoroughly as part of your core studying effort.

What is your exam technique?

You have surely been to examination counselling, or you read the examiner reports and you will see comments like "student failed to read the question" or "to generate enough points to cover the question" or similar. This is exactly what it says on the tin. The question is your clue to the answer. There are no secrets and no conspiracies, but there are some tricks.

Also, how do you allocate time for each question? How do you treat a 5-mark question, vs a 40-mark question? If the answer is not obvious, then you will need to work on your exam technique to generate valid points efficiently and not at the expense of other questions.

How do you time yourself when you do exams is also important.

Do you want to be an actuary?

This is another very important question to ask. Do you really want to be an actuary? A qualified actuary at that? The era of data science and machine learning has opened opportunities in areas across insurance and other financial services sectors. Maybe you do not want to be an actuary. It should not be so much of a taboo thought to accept that you may want to be doing something else and be at peace with that thought. It is not a failure, as you did enter a journey, you learned a lot and the world is big enough and diverse enough, where anyone can make it, whether FIA/FFA or not. The tools and knowledge gained will not be wasted. Of course, when looking at your friends and colleagues, you may think it all as a set-back, but what you make of your future is your decision. There may be a different place in the market where your talent will shine.

The time I had off from studying gave me some time to relax, then go back to studying, and then concentrate on our start-up where I am now the co-creator of a fantastic new actuarial projection system that is changing and disrupting the actuarial software landscape! I was lucky in that I managed to go back to studying and finish my unfinished business, but that would not have been possible if I did not step back and challenge myself on what I wanted to do and seriously decide if I wanted to be an actuary or not. I decided I wanted those three letters next to my name.

Developing the solution

So, we now come to the juicy bit, which is what I did to pass the exams and overcome that curse of the FA that was haunting me.

This is based on what I did for myself, and of course this may not work for everyone. For many of you, I may be stating the obvious or maybe what I write is too far-fetched or over-engineered or simply unnecessary, especially if you are one of the ones that managed to qualify in very little time. This is however not for the latter category of students, but the students in a similar position to me. This is just offering another perspective, based on my story, which ended up in success, and it may help you too. So, here it goes:

Doing the Hours

You need to plan for the exams. You need to have a target for 200 or 300 hours per sitting, or as per the recommended study guide at the start of the course notes.

Make sure you do the hours. I found that in the past I did not do anywhere near as those hours, and I wasted many study days feeling guilty of not doing enough. It is also important that you budget for the days you do nothing. The worse feeling is when you are not in the mood to study, you feel guilty about it, so you neither study nor relax. It is important you take a break, so set a Sunday or a Saturday where you will do nothing, no matter what. Stick to the plan though, on both studying and relaxing, as no plan is good if you do not stick to it. Having a plan and tracking it, means you know when to relax and when to boost your effort without wearing yourself off and enjoying your cheat-days without jeopardising your success. Also, budget for holidays and weekends off, as you will need these. Make sure you allow some recovery time, as I found that when you work and study hard, it is surprising how quickly you can forget things you just read.

It is also important that you treat a study day as study day, and you separate work from study. I will be unpopular here saying that exam success is more valuable to companies and yourself than overtime is. So, next time you are fascinated by that interesting project and you want to see it through by working very long hours, also think that you have a 200-300 hour target to hit for your later subjects. 

Next time that manager compels you to do some overtime, be sure you student manager knows about this to adjust their expectations accordingly.

I logged the hours I did in a spreadsheet which enabled me to keep track of progress against each chapter and against the exam dates to spread the effort. I would recommend you be precise with your time management and log it.

Looking back, I now know I could have done in fewer hours but challenging myself to finish all course notes and leave the last month for past papers, really helped me revisit the key parts of the course in a more critical way. As a result, I understood the topics much better.

Study Approach

You will need to refer to the learning objective all the time. The themes are useful as a super-list. It helps map the (very long) course notes to some bite-sized categories in terms of something more actionable.

Make lists so you can remember how the topics relate to each other but think of lists in a horizontal manner as well, so you can apply them across topics too.

Learn and remember the chapter headers. Make lists out of them as these will be useful in generating ideas for the bigger questions, or the pure course note questions.

Study past papers, as they contain the answers to future questions. You would not be surprised that the past is used to predict the future! I spent a lot of time going through each question, and horizontally mapped them across all sections of the course notes. This means that you can see the clusters of all the questions and their frequency against the topics. You will be surprised on how many topics never come up and some always come up. This helps you study a bit more strategically.

You can also see topics that are dropping in favour or some that become more popular. I found that newer introduced topics, are most likely to be in the exams.

I particularly studied the very long questions worth 25, 30 or 50 marks across many past papers, and I discovered that they all had a very similar structure, although not the same format or exact order. I created a mind map of the way the question was answered and, more crucially, why they were answered the way they were answered. I found that all questions had a similar theme which looked something like this:

• if it was a suggestion, give credit to the suggestion, or to put it bluntly, do not ridicule it or dismiss it
• think of what the suggestion means to the company, and why the person makes this suggestion. Analyse who the stakeholder is and what their interest is in this. (could be risk, profit, competition, product design, misunderstanding a topic etc, which guides you through the type of list you are looking at)
• go through the details of the suggestion, which is your opportunity to demonstrate your own course note knowledge (e.g. could be moving to a new regulatory reporting regime, or new bonus structure), so this is your tie-in to the course notes, so this is where the chapter headers help remember the notes
• but you need to go through each section and tie it to the circumstances of the individual company or country
• the company/country circumstances (size, size of free assets, data availability, maturity, expertise, competition) is important in populating the answer in a relevant way and to skip or to state why some elements are not applicable
• discuss the impact of external, internal stakeholders (see the course section). The trick here is to always discuss current, past and future generations and likely impact (the pitfall is to discuss current only which will miss you a big chunk of easy marks)
• at the end discuss alternatives including pros and cons
• the suggestion could be on pricing, or with-profits, or regulatory regime, or anything, it doesn't matter. This just changes the details of the content and which chapter you are looking at, in which case, you go through the chapter, and is your tie-in to the course note.

The above type of thinking I still apply on all my projects, and is quite comprehensive. Without having seen the other specialist application notes, I suspect the above approach may also be useful.

The above is not an exhaustive list, as I had a lot more items on it, but it gives you an idea on the type of things you would be looking at when you are analysing past papers and when you are cutting through them across time, when you create your generic lists. No matter the topic, you will be sufficiently equipped to answer enough point on the big questions. 

There is always the unicorn question of course, where nothing like it has been asked before, and is unique. There are three things that will save you here: 

• finding all unicorn questions from the past, as you could be seeing a repeat in disguise
• your course notes and your big-question list above
• that you are in the same boat as anyone else, so do your best using your tools and training to answer something relevant in a way that will score you points

Interestingly, if you add all the marks on the suggested answers in the examiner's reports for the big questions, you will often find that these exceeded the available marks given. This proves that it is all about generating enough relevant points, not just the "right" answer. This also shows that the examiners will give credit for valid points, are flexible with the "right" answer, and that you have to give sensible answers, not just "right" or "wrong" answers. This is where exam technique comes to it.

Exam Technique

No doubt, if you have been on exam counselling, you would have read things like "candidates did not read/answer the question", "or did not generate enough points", etc. These are not just buzzwords I realised. They are the truth. Imagine, examiners and markers are people like you, busy, who want to do an unbiased job and mark the papers. They also want to finish their job quickly and efficiently and go to bed or their lives.

Your job is to make their life easy and give them enough clear points so they can find them and credit them back to you, add them all up and give you a pass. When you get an FA or a FB or lower, it means, you did not get credited enough points. I should note, this does not mean that the marker did not "give" you enough points, it means you did not write enough points for them to find, or you wrote the answers in a such a way that made them difficult for them to find those valid points.

Of course, you may believe conspiracies that the pass rates are adjusted to pass a particular percentage or other similar theories. This is irrelevant. Your job is to be on the right side of any cut-off point, and you are the only one that can do that. 

So here is what I did to help my examiner and my marker and position myself in a way to maximise my marks:

• The scenario is that the paper is 180 minutes, and you have a 100 marks question.
• This means, I would allocate 1.8 minutes per mark for drafting my answer. Because I wanted to allow for a margin, I would take that down to 1.5 minutes per mark, which means, that I would have 0.3 minutes per mark margin to revisit questions
• So, for a 10 mark question, I would devote no more than 15 minutes, and I would have 3 minutes buffer that I could use on that question for corrections or additions, or to use on another bigger question. I would try use the margin at the end though.
• I practiced having a calculator and my digital watch to make sure I keep to the times very strictly and accurately.
• Studying the exam papers, I found that the marks are normally awarded in 0.5 marks per valid point, and in more rare occasions you get 1 mark.
• If I was running out of time, I would move on to the next question, and use the margin later to revisit the question, with a "fresh" mind
• I always started from the longest questions. If a question had 50 marks, I would start with that. If I scored 100% on that question, then I would get 50 marks, while if I scored 100% on a 15 mark question, that is only 15 marks. I targeted 80 solid marks across the whole paper if the pass was assumed to be 55-65. Starting from the big ones when you are fresh and you can write fast, means you are better placed to score a larger percentage of that big question, and reach closer to that 80 target.
• It is important you target 80 as if you target 65, you will probably get 40!
• I scored the easy points (like listing things etc) but kept to the time very strictly.
• I used my reading time to strategically circle words that were the clues or the hidden multiple questions within each question. This then when compared against the available marks, hinted to me how many lines I needed, with an average of 0.5 per valid point. It is obvious what you can target, and when you are happy you have enough valid points, and enough to cover all the sub-topics, move on and do not waste more time, as soon as your time limit expires.
• It is important that you don't just write points just for the sake of it. They have to be valid points, and that is where your preparation helps you.
• I also paid particular attention to the wording. There were some key words such as "list", "outline", "briefly describe", "describe", which give you an idea of the effort you need to spend on generating marks. When you put those clues next to the available marks, you understand if "list" means "just bullets", or "just bullets with a bit of text", or "bullets with a lot of explanation". Studying past papers can help with this.
• If a question has 10 marks, you should expect about 0.5 a mark per point, so you should generate 20 points, perhaps 25 to allow for some margin if the list is not pure course work. There is always some clue on which part of the course notes the question is on. If you need more points, you can refer to your big-question list (as above) to generate more points.
• In general, you should think about 0.5 marks per point you are making. However there is a trick to actually converting a point to a mark. You need to write things like "<this> will happen because <explanation> <full stop>. The mark is only valid if you have a clear cause-and-effect phrase. In addition make sure you have short sentences that separate the points into different phrases. The "because <explanation>" clause, is important as it is your opportunity to argue your point, based on course work and by using your lists and can show you understand the point.
• The course work sentences as is, also score you 0.5 marks per line, so you should recite correctly when needed. It is important you remember the course notes accurately.
• Each point I put in different lines to make it easier to mark. This is what examiners do in their reports, so just follow it.
• I used headers to guide my marker on which part of the questions my marks should potentially be allocated to, especially if the question has many parts to it, such as "describe advantages, disadvantages of options 1 and 2". in this case, you should have a minimum four headers.
• I also used headers to mimic the course structure when a whole section was used. It is therefore important you learn the different headers of each chapter, as this can help massively organising your thoughts and making your points relatable to the course notes, but most importantly, making it easier for your marker to find the points and award them to you.
• Do not include multiple points in one sentence, because if one is "right" and one is "flawed" you risk losing both. This is because some times it is difficult to give credit to something that is half-right, and if your marker is tired and busy and find something that is not clear-cut in a sentence, they may find it difficult to find that valid 0.5 mark and much easier to just skip it. 
• A sentence of the type: "<this> will go up then <this> will go down and <this> will then happen, then <that> will go down", is a chain, that is as strong as your weakest link. If that snaps, the whole sentence is nulled. It also does not clearly explain why something will happen as there is no "because <explanation>" clause.
• I also left every-other line of my paper empty, so I could insert more points if I got inspiration later or if I could not remember some elements of a list.
• I also left every other page empty, so I can revisit and add content if I needed, especially if a run out of time, and I needed to come back by using my buffer time.
• Last, I spent time improving my handwriting. Many times, I would write notes and then go back to them and even I could not understand what I wrote. This is something you have to avoid at all costs in exams. I learned how to connect letters in a quick and clear way, so I can improve my speed of writing (very important if you need to hit the 1.5 minutes per mark target), and the clarity of my writing, which helps my marker. 
• I clearly separated out words by leaving bigger spaces than I normally did. I found many online videos which showed trips on how to write quicker and cleaner. If a marker cannot understand what you are writing, they cannot mark you.
• I also practiced my handwriting by hand writing my notes and lists. If anything, my handwriting is much better than it used to be.
• It is also expected that your have a relatively good grasp of the language, so make sure you avoid too many typos and grammatical errors, as these just make the point hunting more difficult.

Monitoring Experience/Results

Well, this is the obvious part, where you need to apply your knowledge, develop the tools during the exam preparation, test the process and revise your approach. 

I built many excel-based grids (Python was not as popular back then and Iris-C was still an idea), which I used to:

• graph my study progress against expected
• create flashcard games
• create a scatter plot of exam question against all topics, and examine any clusters or trends, which help me prioritise topics into high medium and low "risk of occurrence" categories
• I created generic lists, including that big magic list, which I am sure helped me generate many ideas
• depending on my progress and my analysis, I would constantly update my lists and priorities and set new mini-targets
• I always made sure I took my time off and I also exercised so I had lots of energy
• ...it was probably my early example of using data analytics to help me develop my study and make it more fun.

The ultimate monitoring will happen when you open that letter that has the P letter next to your name, in which case you will not need to revisit that plan again!

Conclusion

So there you have it. I went from my personal doom and gloom thoughts, to being qualified at the late age of 37, and looking back, it was all worth it, but it could have been so much easier, and without that big gap in studying. I took a decision after being inspired, and I was determined to change my ways. I was also prepared that I could fail, but luckily that did not happen. I have my family and wife to thank for being there for me and a few special friends who gave me the right clear-headed pep-talk when I needed it, even when it was probably not what I wanted to hear.

It was not easy, and I did clock 100s of hours of very hard and intense studying while in my late 30s. Age does slow you down, trust me!

How do I know I did the right thing? Well, it worked. When I looked at the examiner’s reports, I got the impression that I must have done pretty well too. I could recognise my answers and I could see the magic list appearing in front of me as I had analysed it in the past.

The key for you is to think you are not alone and that the world does not end where exams start. For every LinkedIn story you read about a pass, or for every one of your bright colleagues qualifying in zero time, there are many silent stories like yours, but the good news is that it is all mostly down to you.

Maybe things have changed in the more recent years, where the well-being and mental health of students is more looked at compared to when I was a fresher 20 years ago. Maybe things have not changed, and things are the same, in which case it is up to you my dear friend student, to make a stance for a change in the type of student support and opportunities companies provide to those students who fail or those who may not want to pursuit exams anymore, without making it a binary choice of happiness/depression, promotion/stagnation, success/failure, life goes on/life is on-hold. To make this happen, you should first qualify, and then become that kind person to the future students. The business world and many success stories show us that success and talent comes in many shapes and forms and companies must employ a more human touch to those facing the "curse of the FA result".

Of course, there is no doubt, there has to be an unbiased competence-based education system in place that helps and ensures actuaries reach a minimum level of competence to receive that coveted FIA/FFA title and protect the reputation of the profession. Your job is to put the hours and right type of effort, so you position yourself better for the next exam sitting so that FA finally becomes a P.

Good luck!