I’ve put together a spreadsheet to help me with this choice. Maybe you’ll find it useful.

Disclaimer: I haven’t checked the spreadsheet carefully, so I can’t guarantee it’s error-free.

The correct citation is as follows:

Seddon, Chris and Kelvin Mo. 2008. Annuities ALM—-A practical approach. Presented to the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, 4th Financial Services Forum, Melbourne.

You will find the synopsis of our presentation, plus many more, at the Forum web site.

Yay! I get to go to Melbourne! Say “hi” if you happen to be there.

• actuarial.sty, which provides for symbols and other notation for actuarial, financial and statistical uses; and
• fce-thesis.cls, which is a document class file which provides a basis for typesetting theses in accordance with style guidelines set by the former Faculty of Commerce and Economics (now the Australian School of Business) at the University of New South Wales.

You can download these files from the Koinic Network’s LaTeX page.

Please note that none of these files are supported by anyone.

That’s why the Institute of Actuaries of Australia’s exams are never multiple choice.

It is not courteous to ask a student of his or her examination result. It is up to the student to volunteer this information.

Thank you for your attention.

• Know the environment. You should have a good understanding of the financial and tax systems of the country that sets the exams. Examiners try very hard, but sometimes they may unconsciously assume that you know about these systems, even when you are in another country and it’s fairly reasonable that you don’t.

  In Australia, the Department of the Treasury produces the Pocket Brief to the Australian Tax System each year. The Reserve Bank of Australia website contains a section on Australia’s financial system.

• Know the industry, particularly industry “themes”. It is not uncommon that exam questions are somewhat related to recent industry “themes”. Examiners are human, and so questions draw on their experience, both recent and far away.

A few years ago there was a question in the life insurance paper on unit pricing, just as the topic was receiving substantial attention from the regulator.

• Think like the examiner and marker. Everybody knows that it’s a good idea to do past exam questions, but it’s equally important to mark the questions that you (or others) have done. You’ll learn a lot more seeing how you and your peers mark exam questions. It’ll improve your exam technique substantially.

• Brush up your English. This is targeted at everyone, not just those whose English is their second language. There are always room to improve how you express things. The aim is to explain something simply and succintly.

• Watch the clock. You will always run out of time. Don’t waste time by thinking over exam questions beyond the time you have allocated for them.

• Discuss with people who knows. It’s important that you extract as much knowledge as you can from people who are actually in the industry. This is the only way that you will be able to learn whether the answers you give to exam questions are reasonable or manifestly absurd.

Hopefully that’s a start. If there are any more exam tips, leave a comment.

As of Tuesday 28 February 2006, I am an actuary. This was after four years of university, three years of specialist Part III Courses, two days of the Professionalism Course, and one night attending the thoroughly enjoyable Presidential Dinner. And I can confirm that actuaries do dance.

The first thing I had to do after becoming an actuary was to explain to the taxi driver on the way home what an actuary does. I am sure that this is familiar to all actuaries.

Wah.

There was a rumour that originally only 5 passed, making the pass rate 17%.

Double woot! I think this means that I will be an FIAA very soon.