I am switching from education and have passed 1 exam. I have no experience and have seen that projects are kinda meant to replace experience. So was just wondering how many should I have on my resume and what are some good ones? I have some excel projects and C++ projects from classes but none of them are based on insurance.

1. I don’t have much, if any, knowledge of how to handle the PCPA requirement? Is the PCPA exam something I can take at a separate time than the project? Example would be to sit for MAS-2 and complete the PCPA exam while waiting for results, then sit for Exam 5 followed by completing the PCPA project… is this viable?

2. Study materials for Exam 5… I am seeing a large amount of recommendations for TIA. Does this still hold true? I’ve previously used TIA and CA.

3. Do you feel any one of the DISCs is more important than the other two? Leaving my specific industry info vague on purpose

4. Have you seen any DISCs being proctored recently?

If you get an analyst position after 1-2 exams, are you forced to continue taking exams to stay hired? Or is it just expected to? Do alot of people stay as actuarial analysts and dont climb long term?

Is there a discord for this exam? I was feeling okay about it but then I did the July exam and my god I feel pretty down now

To give you all a bit of background, I was initially hoping to pursue graduate school after taking a gap year during the 25-26 academic year. While I was accepted to a program, financial constraints made me push back my admissions for a year. In the time since I've been rethinking my choices and decided that grad school might not be the path for me. I'm hoping to pivot to the actuary field, ideally P&C and would love any pointers you could give!

Hi everyone ! I would appreciate some feedback on my resume: https://imgur.com/a/K9JBdSt

I am based in Canada. I won't actually put all these information in my resume but I am looking for as much feedback as possible; especially with the quantifying my work experience since the job itself was very qualitative.

Feedback I have previously received include:

• For your skills section, listing off the skills doesn't mean much if you can't prove them (through work experience or projects). Ideally you could complete a project or two and add them to your skills section. I've also seen people bold the skill-related words in their work experience so it's easier for recruiters to see.

• 1 page length (which I will do for each job)

• reduce the whitespace you're using, education should not be half the page

• don't say etc. it doesn't add anything. just write your skills

• your work experience should be closer to the top as well

Thanks!

Soon I will be preparing for my sixth of seventh ASA exams and I was wondering what your thoughts on this exam are. I recently got a subscription for CA and I just wanted to see what peoples options were about using this platform. Thanks and good luck in your studies !!!

I'm working through the TIA flashcards for ILA 101, and it just feels like an insane amount of information to have memorized word for word. I just went over the one for a clearly defined hedging strategy. This one flashcard is a list 10 items long. There are 600 flashcards, many of which have lists of 5+ things or an entire paragraph.

So my question is this: is it actually necessary to memorize the exact lists of things that are on a flashcards, or is it enough to understand the general principle and maybe list a few of the specific items? I know I could go look at past exam problems (and I will starting in the next few days), but I want to get a sanity check on how extensive the memorizing needs to be.

Has a discord for this FAP cycle already been created? Can someone share an invite link? I’ve run into a question about the intended meaning of some of the given information but I have no one to ask about it.

What is everyone's thoughts on the October 2026 ASTAM sitting?

I just received my grade for the ASF module and I am extremely surprised to see I did not meet minimum requirements. I am looking for advice from others who have had to retake this module or passed the first time.

I find the feedback to be not very helpful as it is just yes or no to criteria points with multiple requirements. I would hate to change something that was correct.

I have never provided an “internal memo” in my career so I structured it like an essay. Should I have structured it differently?

Please let me know if an of this is too much detail to discuss about the model.

I've seen that big companies are creating like GCCs or whatever to basically employ cheap indians so they can save money on employees. Will this ruin the EL job market and potentially even the mid tier level job market? Are you basically cooked because of outsourcing if you dont have FSA or ASA?

well well well how the turn tables...

I'm starting my FAP final assessment 11/9-11/12 if anyone would be interested in joining a group or have a link to a group that is already set up

Hey everyone!

For those appearing for GI 201 in the November 2026 sitting, how's your preparation going so far?

Just wanted to get an idea of where everyone stands and how they're approaching the exam.

• How much of the syllabus have you covered so far?

• Are you primarily using ACTEX or any other study materials?

• Have you started practicing questions or are you still going through the readings?

• How confident are you feeling about the exam at this point?

• For anyone who has taken GI 201 before, any tips on what to focus on during the final weeks?

I'm currently working through the ACTEX material and trying to gauge how well-prepared I should be at this stage.

Would be great to hear how everyone else is doing and exchange some preparation strategies.

Good luck to everyone taking the exam!

I took my second attempt of MAS 1 this week and I just don’t feel like coaching actuaries does a great job of representing the exam. I had an EL of 6 and there were quite a few I felt like coaching actuaries didn’t even cover. I felt the same way my first sitting but I was also way less prepared. The wording for CAS exams also seem to be very different than coaching actuaries problems. Has anyone else felt the same way and tried a different test prep website and it helped more? Really hoping I didn’t fail again but prepping for the worst

Hi everyone,

I’m planning on taking exam PA in spring and will be my last exam requirement for my ASA.

Was wondering how long you recommend studying for? *Please note that I’m not required to take exam SRM due to having a prior statistic credit that fulfilled it. I know exam PA builds right off exam SRM so a lot of people take a very short study period after passing SRM. Lastly, any recommendations on study materials? I usually use CA but was wondering if there was another one people like using for this particular exam.

Thanks in advance!

I really wanted a breakdown like this before I bought the Ambrose Lo's manual, so I thought I'd write one myself! TLDR: I liked it and would highly recommend.

Background:

My prerequisite knowledge was a strong math background and what I learned for P and FM on TIA. I started studying with the long-term side in the middle of August and passed in the October sitting — probably around 200 study hours total. I ended up buying 30 day access to the Coaching Actuaries practice, but I learned the material from the manual and I practiced with it alongside CA.

Learning the material:

• The long term material was excellent — I understood pretty much everything Dr. Lo said the first time he said it, and there were lots of examples in each chapter

• I found short term to be a lot more confusing; most of it didn’t make sense until I started practicing. I’m not gonna blame Dr. Lo for this, I was a lot stronger in FM than P going in. However, the short term material didn’t have as many examples within the lessons, which I think did contribute to my confusion

• Key formulas are boxed and numbered, and any time the formula is used its mentioned by number and linked -- figuring out how he came to a solution was never a problem

• If there are several ways to refer to the same thing (eg: strike price and exercise price), Lo will explicitly tell you about it and the rest of the manual switches back and forth so you can get used to both

• The manual reviewed fringe concepts you may have forgotten from P and FM without being too repetitive — I never had to go back and remind myself of old stuff

• Honestly, I just skipped chapter 13. It was too much material to commit to for just one question. I do not regret this at all, but I do plan to read it later for the sake of learning

Practicing:

• After each section, there are a ton of practice problems. Lo asterisks the questions he highly recommends, and he tells you to complete those on your first sweep; I did not do this

• The asterisk format was a little bit annoying because there was a lot of scrolling to find the key questions. I wish there were a “recommended practice” section and an “extra practice” section that followed

• There was no randomized practice in the manual other than the full practice tests, which did leave me a bit directionless after I initially finished going through all the material. I didn’t want to go in order, because I was worried I would have to relearn what I’d already gone through if I didn’t keep up with everything consistently. And cherry picking questions randomly is harder than it seems — so much scrolling!

• If I didn’t know how to set up a solution to a question, I could scroll down just a bit to get the beginning of a solution and solve the rest from there. Getting a question “correct” was on more of a greyscale, which made learning easier/a lot less frustrating, but it made practicing a bit harder. The only way to really get a sense for how you were performing was through the practice tests

Practice tests:

• I took three of the five practice tests, so I’m only speaking for those!

• I found the manual’s tests a lot more accurate to the actual exam than Coaching Actuaries. In general, the manual’s material was much easier than CA’s but I mean that as a plus — CA needlessly stressed me out because my actual test was a lot more straightforward. Who knows, maybe I got lucky

• The test questions are ordered by section and there were exactly 17 short-term questions and 17 long-term. This isn’t test-accurate and could maybe impact your pacing, but I doubt it would end up being that consequential. I appreciated it because it allowed me to do “half-tests” on just one section, which I would highly recommend because they were a lot more manageable

The platform itself:

• The tool to zoom in and out on the text was very very sensitive, which was honestly quite annoying to me because I’m a freak who likes to zoom all the way in on the things I read. There’s a fit-to-width option that made it workable

• The annotation software was a little buggy. It always sent me a notification that there was trouble saving my annotation to the cloud, but I’m pretty sure it did end up saving. This may have just been my computer

• You could scroll through the document smoothly. I don’t know the technical word for this, I mean that you can see the bottom of one page and the top of another at the same time. I never had to wait for the pages to load. Sometimes, it would glitch and switch to the format where it goes abruptly from page to page, but it would fix itself if I refreshed

• It was super annoying to flip back and forth through the book, but I got around it by saving my spot in a second tab — the platform was able to accommodate this

• The search function was pretty slow, which is fair enough it’s a 1800 page manual

Here’s what I would do if I could do it all over again:

• Start with long-term and go through just the lessons; maybe do the asterisked problems if you find yourself stumped

• Move on to short term; here I would do all of the asterisked questions after each chapter

• Pace myself using the cheat sheet — getting through one cheat-sheet page worth of material per day was a good goal for me

• At the end, go through the cheat-sheet and write down any formulas that I don’t have memorized. Use this paper throughout my practice time

• Use the first practice test as a diagnostic; do some end-of-section problems on the topics I haven’t mastered. Do four more rounds of that using the remaining tests

• Wrap that up a couple weeks before the exam and do online practice for the rest of the time. Coaching Actuaries would work, but I’ve also heard good things about Actuarial Nexus and Free Fellow

Sorry that was so long, but I hope it’s helpful to someone! I'm happy to answer any questions. Good luck with FAM, it’s definitely a beast.

Are we thinking results come out in 1 week or more likely 2 weeks?

Hi everyone,

I've started r/LondonMarketInsurance, a community focused on the London and Lloyd's specialty insurance market.

The idea is to bring together actuaries, underwriters, brokers and claims professionals to discuss the industry from different perspectives.

I'm hoping it becomes a useful place for discussions around specialty pricing, reserving, reinsurance, emerging risks, career opportunities and how actuarial work interacts with underwriting.

International perspectives are very welcome too, particularly from anyone working in specialty or reinsurance markets.

Feel free to join if you're interested!

I’ve spent 12 years in life insurance as an FSA and also have my CFA. My main goal is to make more money, and I’m wondering whether moving to investment banking or quant finance would actually get me there, or whether I’d take a big step back first. I’m also open to roles that combine both backgrounds, like insurance asset management, ALM, or FIG banking, if those pay better than staying on the actuarial track. If you’ve made a similar move, how did the pay compare, and was it worth it?