Exams Q&A–Special Edition

Rather than the regular Exams Q&A column, the Basic Education department of the Society of Actuaries would like to take this opportunity to highlight Phase 2 of the Education Redesign–the Fundamentals of Actuarial Practice (FAP) course. Phase 1, Preliminary Education, was implemented in 2005; implementation of Phase 3, FSA Components, is the focus for 2007.

To date, over 4,200 candidates have registered for FAP. We had nearly 1,000 registrants for each of the last two administrations of FAP Exam 1. The availability of the modules, the frequency of FAP Exam 1 administrations (offered four times in 2007) and the on-demand Final Assessment are specifically designed to ease into the schedules of our busy candidates and reduce travel time to associateship.

This past year was an introductory year for FAP. As we reach the end of a full FAP cycle, we turn our attention to improving the FAP experience for our candidates. We have gathered a tremendous amount of rich data throughout the year that will be used as input to the FAP 2007 review/revision cycle, now in the planning stage. We would like to emphasize that candidate feedback and input is critical to the continued improvement of FAP. All comments and suggestions are carefully reviewed and considered, and are crucial to the continuing overall success of the course.

We have many future enhancements planned for FAP in the future, both technical and content related. While the material in the course is intended for our candidates, we realize the information is also beneficial to non-candidates and employers. One of our goals is to make the course available to non-candidates and employers in 2007.

We would like to thank all of our volunteers and candidates for their hard work and dedication and for helping us make this course a successful reality that satisfies the following goals of the education redesign:

• provide a more practice–relevant syllabus
• better prepare actuaries for the future
• reduce travel time to ASA/FSA

We thank candidates for their patience and, most importantly, their participation during this rollout phase. We look forward to an even better and brighter year for FAP.

For complete FAP information, please visit FAP Overview.

Send your FAP feedback to fap@soa.org