Dear Reader,

On May 1st, 2024, several CAS students showed up to their testing centers to take actuarial exams. Their experiences varied from being turned away entirely due to technical issues, to being able to start or even complete the exam with technical issues – although such terrible issues that many have no confidence whether the work they submitted was the work they intended to submit or if some of their answers were deleted, lost to the ether. On May 1st, 2024, CAS actuarial students experienced something that never should have happened. And yet it has, again, and again, and again.

In the Spring 2018 administration, CAS President Brian Z. Brown sent an email following a similar failure in the administration of CAS exams, identifying a remedy: “we have decided to allow all Exam 5 candidates, whether you had technical issues with the exam or successfully completed the exam, to have the option in the near future to sit for a make-up exam”. Meanwhile, 48 hours after the technical issues on May 1st, 2024 were discovered, students were still waiting for an update, as the latest update from the CAS Office stated only that “the CAS is working on separate communications […] and candidates should expect to receive a more specific follow-up email from the CAS Office regarding next steps pertaining to their situation as soon as possible”. Even when another update came, it was not immediately clear what the resolution is, stating that candidates who started their exams would “have the option to have their May 1 exam graded or to reschedule their exam, based on information the CAS will provide on Monday, May 6” which “will include […] how many responses were received” – which is confusing, given that answers were at times partially erased, and it will be interesting to find out what the CAS will consider a “received” answer in short-essay questions.

The lack of communication from the CAS is just yet another strike against their blatant lack of transparency, which candidates have been complaining about for years now. Meanwhile, the CAS maintains its response that they “understand and share the concerns and frustrations regarding this matter and regret this situation occurred. Please note that these issues impacted all Pearson VUE clients and were not specific to the CAS”. While I cannot say what the issues were specifically as I, a student, clearly lack the unshared knowledge the CAS might have to explain what went wrong, I do know that countrywide, groups of CAS students stood in waiting rooms at Pearson together, waiting for an update of if they would be able to return to the exams they had begun. Meanwhile, from our perspective, test-takers present from other organizations seemed to be proceeding as usual.

The lack of accountability shown by the CAS is exhaustingly the biggest issue here. Yes, exams were interrupted, and many students suffered – but this happened in 2018 with the Exam 5 sitting, and again in the Spring 2023 sitting with MAS-II takers who were unable to access the PDF containing the allowed formula sheet, and now again with most, if not all, CAS students on May 1st, 2024. The CAS blames Pearson VUE, and yet, it was the CAS who decided to shift exams to Pearson VUE specifically. Even if this was a failure in Pearson VUE’s part, the CAS has failed actuarial students as well, and refuses to admit any fault – only “regret”.

So, this issue happened. There isn’t anything that can be done to change the past, but there are concrete actions that the CAS can take to change the future.

We want a fair remedy.

Currently, most – if not all – the exam candidates who sat for an exam on May 1st are still in limbo. Those who weren’t able to take their exams at all are being rescheduled, but those who were only able to complete their exams partially or even those who completed them fully and did not have time to review their answers will still have no comprehensive understanding of what was actually submitted – which perpetuates the uneven playing field the CAS has created. Now, the CAS wants students to decide individually and for themselves if their exams – which they can no longer review to see if what was written was fully submitted; so, without complete information – should be retaken or not. This is also not to mention the candidates who, due to personal reasons, will not be able to sit for their new exams in a few weeks, or those candidates who spent such a long and traumatic day at Pearson VUE centers on May 1st that they cannot bear the thought of having to return, and fear performing even worse than their first attempts.

We want accountability.

The CAS needs to be held accountable for their issues with administering exams. Currently, we are all obtaining risk management credentials from an organization that, despite many chances to realize they needed one, has never come up with a plan B before plan A went wrong. If that doesn’t speak to the credibility of the CAS, I don’t know what does. We need the CAS to be more organized and to efficiently and proactively find possible problems – and to address them in a timely manner.

We want transparency.

Yes, this applies to the grading process, but it also applies to the general CAS decision-making process and knowing where we stand. We started on a journey to obtain a credential, and this journey is continuously, from students’ perspectives often suddenly, changing routes – adding an online course and getting rid of an exam, changing exam syllabi, adding the PCPA requirement for ACAS. This makes the process seem never-ending, and particularly unfair due to the recent exam administration issues the CAS has been responsible for. We want to know what “steps” are being taken to address these recent exam administration blunders so we can be confident that when we choose to sit for an exam, we will be given a fair chance to pass. Even though mistakes do happen, by having a transparent process, candidates’ stress and anxieties will be greatly reduced if we are aware of the procedures in place when these unfortunate events take place.

We want student representation.

For an industry that prides itself on being innovative, it is astounding how little the CAS listens to its youngest cohort – its students. We students are continuously excluded from any decisions that are made, many of which have no impact on credentialed actuaries, but have huge impacts on us students. It might even make sense to have credentialed actuaries, who have more experience, making decisions about what content should be tested – but to not even listen to students about how, how often, or when to be tested is unacceptable. Without students taking exams and trying to obtain their own knowledge and credibility, the CAS credentials would be meaningless. It’s about time that students have their opinions heard.

We want exams to be offered more frequently – or at least, we want to have more updated CAS exam questions with which to study.

While it makes sense to have a database of questions to pull from on demand from each exam, this should mean that CAS exams can be taken more frequently. It has been almost five years since the last exams were released, and more frequent exams is a promise that has been made over and over, but it is one that has not been fulfilled. The issues that took place on May 1st, 2024, would not have been so stressful to candidates if they could just sign up for a future sitting in the near future. They would still be an issue, to be clear, but far less stressful than knowing that your next real, fair chance of passing your exam will be in six or twelve months. Meanwhile, we also feel like we aren’t able to study for an exam that is so obscure – we don’t know how it’s graded, we don’t know how the content will be tested, and we don’t even know how many questions it has.

We want the PCPA requirement to be delayed.

Many who have sat for an exam on May 1st, 2024, were not given a fair chance to pass. Even with a remedy, this chance will not be fair – it won’t be the same as if we were able to have a normal, boringly predictable sitting. This is especially an issue given how close some students are to obtaining their ACAS designations and how close these same students are to having another barrier in their way – we should not be subject to an additional requirement due to the failure of the CAS to give us a fair chance in a timely manner.

While it doesn’t feel like it from the perspective of students, the CAS depends on us to survive. It is the main organization that offers credentials for actuaries in the Unites States, but it is not the only one. There are other nation’s organizations that offer credentials in Property and Casualty insurance, and the SOA has a General Insurance FSA track aimed toward Property and Casualty. These options may not be the most popular at the moment, but will become increasingly popular if students who are fed up with the CAS decide to look for other options. With its blatant disrespect towards students, the CAS is shooting itself in the foot by making us regret our decisions of accepting its exam process – or more extremely, by making some of us change fields entirely, or decide to obtain other credentials instead. The future of the CAS depends on us – and it’s up to us – all of us – to ensure the CAS will do what it needs to do to restore its reputation.

With all due respect,

The next generation of actuaries