So far 3 people have emailed me. One said they thought they did well, one said they felt quite good but not absolutely certain about passing, and one person said it was hard and they don't think they passed.
I've also been hearing about a question on IFRS 17 that a lot of people missed. I will paste my response about that question below:
About the IFRS 17 question: I'm very surprised they asked about that. There is mention of IFRS 17 in the CIA.Valn (CIA Valuation - Guidance to the AA). IFRS 17 is an updated version of IFRS 4, but won't be effective until 2021. And the IFRS 4 reading used to be on the 6C syllabus but was removed about a year-and-half ago. That indicated to me that it wasn't an important topic. In the wiki article for CIA.Valn, I focused on Section 9 - Current or Emerging Issues. I never would have predicted they would ask about IFRS 17 from Section 7 of that paper.
I suppose the CAS would say that candidates are responsible for everything in the syllabus but that is just not realistic.
Having said that, it's normal even for well-prepared candidates to completely miss a couple of questions, and maybe only half-answer a few others.
Thanks Graham. My feedback of the exam is that in this exam they made us work more for every point compared to previous exams. As a comparison, when I did Spring 2018 (unseen) as a practice at home I finished it half an hour before time. Even if we give credit to the fact that home and exam conditions are different I would have still finished that one 10-15 mins before time.
Fall 2018 was significantly different. Though total points were 71.25, I felt each point required more work especially calculation questions in middle. I ended up finishing the whole exam but barely made it and had to rush in middle and it wasn't walk in the park. IFRS17 was surprise and I expect more surprises like this in future given you have raised the standard of students through BattleActs.
Essentially the same comments as MIC. It was harder than expected on my part. Most of the questions were fair but calculation problems felt harder than past sittings.
With that said, I was wondering if you were planning on doing a correction of the whole exam and make it available on Battleacts?
Interesting. It seems people generally think 2018.Fall was harder than recent past exams. And I do worry they may raise the standard for passing if candidates are better prepared using BattleActs. On the other hand, if they really do not grade on a curve, then the pass rate should go up. We'll see.
I have not looked at the exam yet myself. I'll download it in the next few days so I can see what everyone is talking about. But I probably won't have time to create an answer key prior to the CAS publishing the full examiner's report with solutions. Sorry about that. You guys should take a break and try not to think too much about it. Easier said than done! It's been on your mind for many months so letting it go isn't easy, but you'll definitely feel better if you can find a way to put it out of your mind.
Ok, I just dl'd the exam and took a quick look. It did look a little harder because there seemed to be more "new" questions. Also, there were more calculations than usual and those problems take longer, which means you'd be under more time pressure. Lastly, they changed the ordering of questions slightly and put some high-point-value calculations closer to the end than the middle:
Q24 for 4.00 pts
Q25 for 4.00 pts
Q27 for 2.75 pts
It seemed there were also more "thinking" questions versus straight memorization. Of course, there were also a fair number of standard questions that are frequently asked, like Q1ab on contract and transaction matters (1c was thinking question), Q2a (Insurance Reference Case), Q3 (rate regulatory approaches), and so on.
Interestingly, I don't think I saw any questions on modeling. I predicted that was one of the new papers that would be tested. The did, however, test the other 3 new papers:
ICBC.Afforable - BC auto insurnace
IFA.Solvency 2 - they asked about ENID (Events Not In Data)
Marshall.Benefits - ON auto insurance
You could argue that someone who studied the modeling paper thoroughly waster their time. That's why I say there is often luck involved in passing. For people who don't pass, don't be too hard on yourself. If you did pass, take it and don't look back!
Comments
So far 3 people have emailed me. One said they thought they did well, one said they felt quite good but not absolutely certain about passing, and one person said it was hard and they don't think they passed.
I've also been hearing about a question on IFRS 17 that a lot of people missed. I will paste my response about that question below:
About the IFRS 17 question: I'm very surprised they asked about that. There is mention of IFRS 17 in the CIA.Valn (CIA Valuation - Guidance to the AA). IFRS 17 is an updated version of IFRS 4, but won't be effective until 2021. And the IFRS 4 reading used to be on the 6C syllabus but was removed about a year-and-half ago. That indicated to me that it wasn't an important topic. In the wiki article for CIA.Valn, I focused on Section 9 - Current or Emerging Issues. I never would have predicted they would ask about IFRS 17 from Section 7 of that paper.
I suppose the CAS would say that candidates are responsible for everything in the syllabus but that is just not realistic.
Having said that, it's normal even for well-prepared candidates to completely miss a couple of questions, and maybe only half-answer a few others.
Thanks Graham. My feedback of the exam is that in this exam they made us work more for every point compared to previous exams. As a comparison, when I did Spring 2018 (unseen) as a practice at home I finished it half an hour before time. Even if we give credit to the fact that home and exam conditions are different I would have still finished that one 10-15 mins before time.
Fall 2018 was significantly different. Though total points were 71.25, I felt each point required more work especially calculation questions in middle. I ended up finishing the whole exam but barely made it and had to rush in middle and it wasn't walk in the park. IFRS17 was surprise and I expect more surprises like this in future given you have raised the standard of students through BattleActs.
Essentially the same comments as MIC. It was harder than expected on my part. Most of the questions were fair but calculation problems felt harder than past sittings.
With that said, I was wondering if you were planning on doing a correction of the whole exam and make it available on Battleacts?
Thanks!
Interesting. It seems people generally think 2018.Fall was harder than recent past exams. And I do worry they may raise the standard for passing if candidates are better prepared using BattleActs. On the other hand, if they really do not grade on a curve, then the pass rate should go up. We'll see.
I have not looked at the exam yet myself. I'll download it in the next few days so I can see what everyone is talking about. But I probably won't have time to create an answer key prior to the CAS publishing the full examiner's report with solutions. Sorry about that. You guys should take a break and try not to think too much about it. Easier said than done! It's been on your mind for many months so letting it go isn't easy, but you'll definitely feel better if you can find a way to put it out of your mind.
Ok, I just dl'd the exam and took a quick look. It did look a little harder because there seemed to be more "new" questions. Also, there were more calculations than usual and those problems take longer, which means you'd be under more time pressure. Lastly, they changed the ordering of questions slightly and put some high-point-value calculations closer to the end than the middle:
It seemed there were also more "thinking" questions versus straight memorization. Of course, there were also a fair number of standard questions that are frequently asked, like Q1ab on contract and transaction matters (1c was thinking question), Q2a (Insurance Reference Case), Q3 (rate regulatory approaches), and so on.
Interestingly, I don't think I saw any questions on modeling. I predicted that was one of the new papers that would be tested. The did, however, test the other 3 new papers:
You could argue that someone who studied the modeling paper thoroughly waster their time. That's why I say there is often luck involved in passing. For people who don't pass, don't be too hard on yourself. If you did pass, take it and don't look back!