The Actuarial Exam Process
If you are aspiring to become an actuary, then you ought to dedicate yourself to the preparation of the actuarial exams. This is because it is this exam that determines your degree of success at becoming an actuary.
What are the steps in an actuarial exam process?
Whether or not you attain the status of a professional actuary depends largely upon your passing the actuarial exams. The exam process for your journey towards becoming an actuary starts with the preliminary exam. This is the exam that serves the function of laying your foundation. Until you have mastered the preliminary exam, you cannot move further in the process of becoming an actuary. After you have cleared the preliminary exam, you can then move on to the next step of the exam process. This step requires you to attain validation through educational experience. These steps and the other ones after these are meant to increase your knowledge in actuarial science and advance you towards becoming a professional actuary.
What do Preliminary Exams and Validation through Education experience entail?
Preliminary exams act as the very foundation for gaining skills related to actuarial science. In this exam, the areas on which candidates are tested include probability, financial mathematics, financial economics and life contingencies. In addition, there is also an exam that tests your skills in constructing and evaluating actuary models and actuarial tables. The Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries are the bodies that are responsible for sponsoring and carrying out the preliminary exams. All of these exams require computer-based testing. After the preliminary exams comes the requirement for the Validation by Educational experience, widely known as VEE. There are three subjects on which candidates are tested for this. These include economics, corporate finance and applied statistical methods. All the candidates are required to clear these exams in addition to the preliminary exams.
While these two steps are the basic ones in the exam process, there are more exams for those who wish to advance their actuarial careers.
What comes next to the Preliminary Exams and VEE?
If you want to advance yourself as an actuary, you are required to meet the specific requirements of the associateship program and then move on to the fellowship stage. According to the Society of Actuaries, there are three associateship designations that a candidate can attain after giving the exam. After this they can get the credential of the Associate of the Society of Actuaries. There are also credentials of Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst and the Fellow of the Society of Actuaries. Actuaries can complete the fellowship requirements after they have achieved the associateship designation and have completed the required experience. The associateship and fellowship exams are rather difficult in nature and require hard work from the actuaries. However, once you clear the exam, you can expect to be very well acquainted with the knowledge areas of actuarial science.
For those people who wish to specialize in actuarial science, there is university education as well, which can really help towards gaining senior positions as actuary. If you wish to get education in actuarial science, then there are universities that are popular for their actuarial science degree.