Which IFoA Actuary exams to do, and when to do them?

I signed up to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) as a student member at the end of 2020. This is when I first started studying for the actuarial exams. I was fortunate enough to be on the Level 7 BPP Actuarial Apprenticeship Scheme which enabled me to get a coach and a rough plan on how to tackle exams. TLDR: skip to the end to see my exam order.

April 2021

The IFoA syllabus changed for 2019 and then in 2020 the exams moved to online only because of COVID. By the time I sat my first exam it was the 5th sitting under the new syllabus and 3rd sitting which was online only. It was lockdown so instead of testing the waters with just one exam, I decided to take two exams. I started with CS1 and CB1. CS1 because I would find statistics easy due to my mathematics degree. CB1 because it was deemed one of the easier exams but I found it slightly tricky having never studied accounting before. I definitely recommend starting with either one of these if you just want to sit one exam at the start.

September 2021

After my April exams I immediately decided to sit CM1 and CB2 in September 2021. To be honest I thought CM1 would be more mathsy but it wasn't really. It was more about getting your head around interest rates, discount rates, assurances and annuities. I then started studying for CB2 which was a struggle initially because back then you had to study a big textbook. But the CB2 exam itself is not too difficult. In my opinion, I do not think you have to sit CB1 before CB2, so if you prefer economics then you can sit CB2 first if you wish.

April 2022

Since I moved out of my parents place post COVID and I was now more social, I decided to scale back my exam taking and I just sat CS2 by itself. CS2 was meant to be a tricky paper, but I didn't find it too difficult given that a lot of the topics I had already covered in my mathematics degree. Topics such as Time Series and Markov Chains. There is some link to CS1 and the material assumes you have studied CS1 so it makes sense to study CS1 before CS2.

September 2022

I decided to carry on sitting one exam at a time and sat CM2 next. This I found slightly trickier than CS2 because some topics I had not studied before at university. Topics such as Brownian motion and Black-Scholes. I find that sitting the CS exams before CM exams was quite beneficial. The maths exams typically have less notes as it is less wordy but you need to spend more time understand the formulae and proofs.

April 2023

With all the core exams out of the way I decided to sit CP1 next. In fact, the April sitting is more relaxed as there are more months between September and April to study. But April to September is a shorter period. Since CP1 is the exam with the most content then it made sense to do this for the April sitting. I also needed to sit CB3 which is more of a coursework type module. Easy enough. Does it make sense to sit all the core exams before doing the core principles? I think it does. In my opinion, you would only sit the core practices if you already have many years of experience / you were pivoting from another role into an actuarial role. But if you are a graduate and just starting your career then I think you should do the core exams first.

September 2023

I decided to do CP2 and CP3 next. Both are simple exams and easy enough to prepare for. There are potential banana skins, time pressure - as the exam can be time pressured, reading the question - doing something that wasn't asked for, and complacency - thinking the exam will be easy. If you can avoid these pitfalls you will pass straightforwardly.

April 2024

Specialist exams. I decided to sit two exams at the same time, SP7 and SP8. These are the exams that specialise in General Insurance. I found SP8 intuitive and straightforward as most of my experience is in pricing. SP7 was harder for me as I had not done a lot of reserving in my career but enough to have some background knowledge of the subject. I would only sit the specialist exams earlier if I had many years of experience in that particular subject area. For example, 5 years in a General Insurance pricing background. Otherwise it makes sense to attempt the core practices before the specialists.

September 2024

Only one exam left. This would be SA3 for me. The exam was quite tricky for me as it leaned towards capital modelling but I gave it a good go. If I have to retake then it won't be an issue as the material is still quite fresh in the mind for me. Awaiting results in December! I know some people take all 3 specialists at the same time, which makes sense as there is significant overlap between them. However, the thought of doing 3 exams in one sitting was too much for me. Some people take these one at a time so it is upto you.

TLDR

• April 2021: CS1, CB1

• September 2021: CM1, CB2

• April 2022: CS2

• September 2022: CM2

• April 2023: CP1, CB3

• September 2023: CP2, CP3

• April 2024: SP7, SP8

• September 2024: SA3