GH-Specialty Spring 2022

Figured we might as well start this new thread.

I’m trying to get ahold of all of the source material for the exam. I have everything on Disease Management and Risk Adjustment, but I am missing a few items of ERM:

  • GHS-117-16: Ch. 18 of Life & Health and Annuity Reinsurance, 4th Edition
  • GHS-121-18: Enterprise Risk Management, Ratings Direct, pp. 1-14 only
  • GHS-128-19: RBC Calculation Examples
  • GHS-130-22: Chapter 41, Risk-Based Capital Formulas, of Group Insurance, 8th Edition
  • GHS-131-22: ERM—Health Risk Controls

Any suggestions on where to get those for free online?

@ibp I remember you were looking for GHS-131-22: ERM – Health Risk Controls (new to 2022), did you ever find a digital copy?

Unfortunately not :frowning: Spent just a little bit of time but couldn’t find it. I ended up ordering the incremental new source material.

Did that include the chapter from group insurance 8th edition?

It looks like the 2022 revision study notes should include that.

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Hasn’t arrived yet so I can’t confirm, but it should as it’s now a study note. I can’t imagine it would change much from previous edition.

MATE materials were delivered today, so I guess I’m about to start studying by reading through the outline. Happy there’s an exam thread where people will actually be posting.

I have the MATE notecards from last year, which don’t include the new readings. Can you purchase just the new material, or do you have to buy the entire thing?

I suppose I could email the MATE customer service this question, but I didn’t think about that until I started writing this post.

You have to purchase all the material again, they don’t have an option for just purchasing the updated syllabus stuff. If your company won’t cover it, you can email them and they’ll give you a coupon code for 40% off.

Thanks, I’ll send them an email.

Does anyone know when the SOA usually opens up registration for Spring sittings?

Based on the Spring 2021 specialty thread it looks like people registered mid to late February. This sitting seems to be a couple of weeks later than normal though, so it might be later than that. Or it could be earlier. Who are we to guess at the ways of the almighty SOA??

Got my supplemental study notes in the mail today (why on earth do they mail physical copies?? They could just send PDFs). I can confirm that this new reading “ERM - Health Risk Controls” isn’t some free article like most of the study notes, it looks like it was written specifically for the exam.

Looks like registration for the Spring sitting has opened:

Does anyone know when grades for the Spring sitting will be out? It looks like the deadline to register for the late August FAC is July 12, but that seems earlier than grades came out last year (I want to say it was July 16). Just trying to see if it’s worth trying to knock out the DMAC in addition to studying for the Specialty Exam. Thanks!

I’m guessing you would have to attend the December FAC if you wanted to attend in person. The deadline for the August virtual FAC is 8/1, so grades would definitely be out by then.

My concern is that to register for the August FAC, your DMAC has to be submitted by 5/9, which means I’d have to do the DMAC while I studied for the exam. Seems like at this point I’ll be counting on there being a December FAC.

I emailed the SOA about this when I saw the dates. I already completed DMAC so just need this exam to be done. Thought it might have just been an oversight on their part with the registration deadline being set two days before exam results are released, but they just shrugged and said “we can probably get you in”.

Can anyone tell me how comprehensive and sufficient the TIA flash cards are for this exam? I only used the TIA videos and flash cards for Design and Pricing they seemed sufficient and led to a pass for me. I have basically all of the flash cards down for specialty so far, and could discuss/analyze the material on them for more critical type questions pretty easily, but am wondering if there is much material not covered by the flash cards I could get tested on. I also have the calculation examples from the videos down pretty well for reference. If anyone took this exam with TIA and can comment I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Short answer - I have no idea. This is my third sitting, so I’m probably not the best person to weigh in on this. TIA notecards are much more reasonable to memorize than the MATE notecards though. I went through both sets and created my own set of notecards. Most of the time they lined up, but MATE would have extra detail on them that I would usually leave out since I already have a hard enough time memorizing.

A lot of this exam is luck of the draw. There’s so much material and so few questions on the actual exam, that you’re just hoping they ask you about something that you studied well.

So what’s everyone strategy for our last few days? I’m planning on going through notecards, as many practice problems as I can manage (MATE + past exams), and next week I’d like to try and re-read a bunch of the syllabus readings. I’m hoping that since I’ve spent so much time memorizing things a quick re-read will help solidify the context of everything.

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