New Exam Forum Needed

Not nearly as much exam traffic here as on the AO, but we ought to make it as candidate-friendly as possible. The SOA has a new-preliminary exam, already given in October. It’s Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics (FAM), all multiple choice. Due to transition rules, for several sessions candidates who passed the old LTAM can just take the FAM-S subset; those who passed the old STAM can take just the FAM-L subset. Candidates passed neither LTAM nor STAM must take the entire FAM. It’s CBT, but no instant results for a few sessions.

LTAM and STAM no longer exist. For ASA (and FSA) candidates need credit for either ALTAM (Advanced Long Term Actuarial Mathematics) or ASTAM (Advanced Short Term Actuarial Mathematics), each of which is all written answer. Both are first offered next spring. Candidates who already passed STAM or LTAM have credit for the corresponding Advanced Exam. IMO, it’s unnecessary to add “Advanced” to the names of those fora, especially with so little posting activity.

There’s also a Statistics for Risk Modeling Exam, 35 multiple choice questions, CBT without instant results for the first few sessions, that was first given in Sept 2022. We don’t have a forum for that here either.

Thanks for the updates on the Exam structure. I’m sure that we’ll be able to adjust (i.e. repurpose) discussion areas to align with the current structure; but it might take some time.

@SpaceLobster, looping you in directly since I’m not sure to what extent moderators can make changes.