• Source: LO text is copied verbatim from the SOA's ILA 201-U syllabus (Nov 2025 / Mar 2026 / Jul 2026 version). TIA lesson numbers are from TIA's F2026 course.
• LO 3 "crediting rating agency" is the SOA's wording, not my typo
• I'd say I'm happy to share a plain-text/table version if anyone wants it for copying or accessibility... but also I can't guarantee whether I'll check and see within the next 4 weeks

Good luck to everyone sitting for the 11/18 exam!

At higher levels when you start having bonuses you are leaving behind in the 30-40k+ range are people getting this fully covered by a sign on bonus? It seems like that is the main way the math works without taking a "promotion" and not coming ahead for over year, but I feel I have ran into multiple situations where they have a "cap" of 10-15k for sign on bonuses.

hey, i submitted a post on this channel last week and it absolutely blew up. we had so many applications go through. a bunch of the job postings shut down in the days following my post because of the large influx of applications that were going in. i've gone ahead and updated the job links in this new link. please make sure to apply as soon as possible to ensure that your application is at the top of the pile. i've pulled the freshest job postings that i could.

here are the actuarial, pricing, reserving and catastrophe modelling roles open right now, pulled from employers' own careers pages:

• UK insurers and Lloyd's syndicates (30): https://github.com/mehek-builds/UK-Insurance-and-London-Market-Jobs/blob/main/lists/actuarial-pricing-modelling.md
  • 30 roles at 17 employers (AXIS Capital, Chaucer, Hiscox, MS Amlin, Tokio Marine HCC, Markel, Starr, Travelers, Bupa, Rothesay)
  • pricing actuaries and analysts, reserving and capital modelling, exposure management and cat modelling; every level except director and head
  • placement and graduate roles are in the same repo
• US remote actuarial roles (44): https://github.com/mehek-builds/Remote-Jobs/blob/main/lists/actuarial.md
  • 44 roles at 23 companies (CareSource, Centene, Oscar Health, The Standard)

rebuilt every monday.

comment which area and country you're after and i'll send you a list for it.

I have an interview with Cambia, with 2 actuaries, but it's like a first time I'm hearing from them, like what should I expect for their interview process, and what type of questions should I expect

My wife and I have a new born. I did not purchase banquet ticket because we would have to bring the new born with us. Is it possible for them just to attend the diploma and skip the banquet? Or a guest pass must be purchased?

How can I survive this waiting period knowing that I am very likely to have to take it again next April? Such torture discourages me from doing anything meaningful right now. Any advice on how to adjust my mood?

If there was one thing you wish someone could make right now in the actuary space to make your life easier/would be useful. What would it be?

How are we feeling right now? Late October likely means we still have at least a week before results are out. Is anyone ready to jump right into the Oct-Dec sitting if they don’t pass 😭

There was a long thread that someone posted here at some point about how they passed FAM, it was explicitly stating the hours they spent on each section etc. anyone who can point me to it?

Taking exam 6 in a few days and can’t help but feel this exam is just way too long and could benefit from being split up between 2 exams (one on financial statements and one on regulation, that way they could each be covered by candidates more effectively). it got me wondering, does anyone else agree? What other exams could benefit from being split up or the merged? For example I think they should get rid of the PCPA exam portion. it’s mostly repetitive from MAS exams, and any new material could be tacked onto MAS-II and the prerequisite for the project could be changed from completing the PCPA exam to passing both MAS exams. Thoughts?

Is there a way to determine which past exam questions are still relevant following the FSA structural changes introduced in Fall 2025? For example, I'm preparing for GH301 next month and would like to know which questions from previous exams are still applicable to the current sitting, given the syllabus changes. I'm aware that there’s a question bank for past exams on the SOA website covering the period before the recent FSA structural changes, but this would be a specific question bank for example after the FSA structural changes.

Hey everyone! I’m currently a senior in college graduating next sem, and I recently received an actuarial internship offer with a deadline for sometime next week

However, I’m also interviewing for full-time actuarial positions, which I would prefer since I’ll already have graduated. During one of my interviews, I was told that decisions typically take 2–3 weeks.

I’m wondering if I should reach out to the full-time recruiter and let them know about my upcoming deadline, or if that would come across as putting pressure on them to make a decision sooner, and potentially affecting my application status.

My other concern is that since my current offer is for an internship rather than a full-time role, I could potentially accept it and later receive a full-time offer. However, I’d prefer to avoid reneging if possible.

Would you recommend communicating my deadline to the recruiter, even though the competing offer is only an internship, and I am graduating soon?

Is it worth going to ASNA for full-time if you’re out of school?

I just took PA last week and am hoping to take FAM in February and also complete ATPA by the end of December.

Is this feasible? I know ATPA is a take home assessment, but is studying for ATPA and completing the assessment and studying for FAM at the same time biting off too much?

Since I just took PA, I feel like completing ATPA now makes sense. I’d also prefer taking FAM in Feb and not waiting til July. The holidays present an added variable as well as I will definitely be going home for Thanksgiving and potentially Christmas as well.

How much is my life gonna suck if I do this?

Applied for an entry-level actuarial role at a new york life. Had a 2-hour phone interview (the interviewer said it was the longest he'd had), and it felt like a good conversation. He said 1-2 weeks for next steps. It's been ~10 days, and I emailed the recruiter about the timeline a week ago with no reply. Is this normal, or should I be worried? How long did it take you to hear back after a first-round interview, and when did you follow up?

I took ASTAM this morning, and didn’t realize until the last few minutes that the instructions said to write it in pen, so I did the whole thing in pencil. Does anyone have any experience with this, and if so, was your exam graded normally?

I felt pretty good about the exam, and I would hate to have my submission disqualified because of my writing utensil.

Anyone have a link or know how to access photos from the FAC? I want some of the professional photos they took, especially from the Banquet.

I’m a senior in college trying to get a fourth exam done before I start my full-time job for the salary boost. However, this means I do not have a company to spend $1,000+ on study materials for me.

Only using the textbooks was a perfectly sufficient strategy for SRM, but this is obviously a very different exam. Has anyone done this and been successful in passing for FAM? My plan was to spend the next 2 or so months grinding out the 3 textbooks, then practice using ACTEX Goal and the SOA Sample Questions. Will this be enough, or do the textbooks not adequately cover all materials?

Actually it was before the exam, I dreamt about being asked to calculate the reserve differential using Thiele’s differential equation during an interview and I somehow just couldn’t get the answer correct and I failed that interview and didn’t get internship offer.

Hi all. Looking for feedback here. I started job hunting tepidly in March and more seriously in May after passing SRM. No leads until the start of August after I made some resume improvements, and I made more improvements at the start of October, and I'm sharing the current version. I've had 5 recruiter calls/interview since August, 2 of which were in October. This is with about 120 applications since August and 50 since October, and I didn't track carefully before that.

With only 1 of the 5 did I get to go a bit deeper in the process since they had me do some little reasoning/math/programming screening tests, which I did very well on, though it seemed they moved on with someone else who they had interviewed before on a previous hiring cycle.

Feels like I'm at least getting some traction, so this could work out any moment, but after the latest rejection, it felt like the right time to get some more opinions and guidance. Thanks everyone!

I'm open to SOA or CAS aligned positions. Went up to 4 exams just to try to distinguish myself more since I'm a career changer without an internship. When I sensed I was getting more opportunities from CAS aligned opportunities, I added new projects to try to show a good fit with that area, despite my extra exams being on the SOA side. Indeed, all 5 leads I've had have been in P&C areas.

Taking FAM tomorrow morning, I don’t think there’s anything I can do at this point except review the formula sheet. What do you do the day before an exam?

Hi Everyone,

As the title says, I am looking for free resources for studying. For exam P and FM, I used the SOA resources to learn the content and practice. However, there isn't a lot of resources that are free for FAM. Thank you in advance!

P.S. I am a college student which why my funds are a little tight.

Hey everyone,
I wanted to practice bridging actuarial math with modern software engineering, so I built a valuation and Asset-Liability Management (ALM) engine in C# / .NET and deployed it as a live web app on Azure.

What it does:

Seriatim Projections: Runs month-by-month multi-state Markov chain transitions on in-force policy data using O(1) dictionary lookups.

Statutory Reserving: Calculates Disabled Life Reserves (backward recursion) and Terminal Active Life Reserves.

Live ALM Shocks: Matches 360-month liability cash flows against a fixed-rate bond portfolio to test Modified Duration and Duration Gap under parallel interest rate shocks.

I also wrote up a full breakdown of the math and system architecture on the site. Feel free to run some basis-point shocks on the portfolio and see how it handles the calculations:
https://financialmodels-fnhybtd9a2frexh9.centralus-01.azurewebsites.net/

(Note: It’s hosted on Azure's free tier, so if the server has gone idle, the very first page load might take 10–15 seconds to wake up. Once it's up, the calculations are instant!)