 Hey everyone, it's MJ and in this video, I want to look at the actuarial exam pass rates So what I've got over here are the pass rates for the exams written in around April 2019 so the very first exam session of the year and it isn't a little bit tricky looking at them because the exams have changed since I wrote them they've got new Codes they've got new names and sometimes they've even bundled some subjects together and split other ones apart So it's a little bit confusing So I'm going to refer to the subjects by their by their name rather than their code I am looking at the South African data Although I would expect it to be quite similar to the American the English and the Indian data as well I think I think yeah the exams are kind of like if one exam stuff in South Africa It's going to be tough in in the other places as well. So I think we can use this as proxy data The way I look at the exams is that there's essentially there's four levels Level one is what you do in your undergrad level two is what you're looking at doing at the end of your undergrad Maybe the beginning of your postgrad Level three or your postgrad subjects and then level four is what you do on your own outside of university So level one is normally very mathematical Level two is more application. This is the famous CA1 exam or actuarial risk management communications model documentation Level three is more your specialist subjects and then like I said level four is your fellowship subject. So level three you choose two and Level four you choose one So that you're going too much into the exam structure because it's probably gonna change next year Let's look at the actual pass rates and I've ordered them in you know, which exam people pass the most And I've ordered all the way down to the bottom where the subject. Yeah, there was an exam that nobody passed But Joe will get to that one what I've also done is I've correlated it with the levels So I've looked at the levels of the subjects first their pass rates and there's around a 63 percent correlation meaning the lower the exam The more likely there's people were to pass and this is what we expect more people to pass level one exams than to pass level four exams Although the fourth the fourth worst exam was the level one exam So they are a little bit of anomalies And what I also did is I correlated the amount of youtube videos I have on the subjects Would the pass rate and I found that there was a 65 percent positive correlation So the more videos I have on a topic the higher the pass rate Although that might be because I'm just making videos on the easy subjects, but I'm further ado Let's let's get into these these results. So coming up in first place was life contingencies This is where we calculate, you know How much money people need to put aside in order to you know get money back when they they die This is basically bread and butter actuarial signs 175 people wrote the exam here in South Africa, and we had a pass rate of 57 percent Which is very good. I mean that's that's more more than half Also at 57 percent was actuarial statistics now for those of you who don't know and this is a little bit of Advertising I have a whole bunch of videos on actuarial statistics on you to me, which you can go and check out I mean, I've also got a whole bunch of videos on life contingencies But therefore free on on YouTube Third place we have business finance Which I think was called accounting back in my day that had a 54 percent pass rate Only 41 people wrote it though. That's quite a small number I think that's because a lot of people get that exemption at university because accounting is very easy Then in fourth place we have financial maths This only had a pass rate of 48 percent but a hundred and fifty nine people wrote it I've also got a lot of YouTube videos on this Then I was very impressed by this one coming up in first place was the dreaded CA1 Actuarial risk management exam 207 people wrote it 93 passed so that gives us a rate of 45 percent Which I'm very impressed by because in my opinion that's that's the hardest exam. So and it came fifth So that's not too bad Then we see the very first Level three exam popping up and that is the specialist in the health subject. So this is like, you know discovery Medical aides and and all those type of things and that had a pass rate of 44 percent, which is very good. That was the best Pass rate for the specialist subjects Coming back to a level one exam is business economics and why did this only had a 41 percent pass rate? This is an easy subject. Why was the pass rate so low for that one? I would have expected business economics to be a little bit higher But like I said, they might have changed that they might have made the subject a little bit harder Then we have another level three exam and this is the risk specialist. This is for enterprise risk management If you want to become a Sarah act tree 78 people wrote a chance in South Africa 32 past That's a pass rate of 41 percent Which I think if I remember correctly is above the global average shows that your South Africans Very good when it comes to risk calculations Then we have the pension specialist subject coming in at nine with a 40 percent pass rate communications Exam, I mean, this is a subject. Some people get it and it's like it's the easiest exam I'll meet with one of my easiest exams and other people who just struggle struggle with it I mean, it's a lot of essay writing. There's hardly any maths and of the hundred eighty three people who wrote it So that's quite a lot only yeah, there's only a 35 percent pass rate Then we get an 11th position our first fellowship exam and that is for the life fellowship and that like I say That's your traditional act tree and just like how we saw Contingencies was had the highest pass rate with the little one exams life The life fellowship has got the highest pass rate of the fellowships But only a 34 percent which is I mean, that's still low only one in three people are passing the fellowship I mean, which kind of sounds yeah, it makes sense I it took me three attempts to pass my fellowship. So that that percent is quite accurate for me Then we see another fellowship the banking fellowship. This is very much a unique exam to South Africa I think when it first came out it had a zero percent pass rate It's now come up to have a 33 percent pass rate. So that's that's pretty good And quite a lot of people wrote it 21 people wrote it Which is more than the health fellowship which comes in next health fellowship had a pass rate of 31 percent It's pretty good Then there is the general insurance specialist subject. Oh, I wrote this at university. It was so tough I didn't get the exemption for it. It was I found it like Very very challenging, but they've got a 30 percent pass rate for it. So That's pretty good general specialist Then the life specialist Only has a 27 percent pass rate. So it's interesting how that pass rate is lower than its fellowship Now that is quite an interesting one Then we have risk models which is going back to a level one Subject and this was back in my day. See back in my day. This was two separate exams It was known as ct4 and ct6 They decided to add these things together and add on a computer element And yeah, we can see a pass rate of 27 percent, which is very very low Then we see the lowest specialist subject from a pass rate Which is a little bit awkward for me because I actually have youtube videos on this one This is the financial specialist. Well, there are not many people watch the financial specializing videos of mine I've also got a book if you want, I'll put a link in the to the amazon Store where I've written a book on just understanding financial instruments because there's a way to break them up So that they're quite easy to to comprehend And you can swap these little parts around and create your own little instruments It's quite fun, but that only had a pass rate of 26 percent. That's the lowest of the specialist Then financial engineering, which is the level one. It's the level one subject. This is what we do in undergrad This had a pass rate of 26 percent, which is incredibly low for a level one subject It is the lowest pass rate for the level one subject And that it's it's also they they've made this one tricky because when they destroyed ct6 and they combined half of it with You know survival models to create risk models They also moved the the runoff triangles and ruined theory into this exam Which was really difficult with stochastic calculus and ectosilema and oh you guys remember all that tricky stuff so it's Yeah, I think I think it probably was a difficult exam, but your 26 percent is a very low pass rate Um, I'll be giving a workshop on this one on the 3rd of august in capetown and again Sometime in september. So if you are part of the whole asa Society here in South Africa make sure you register for that And then you'll be able to see me in person and we're gonna go and try and Increase the pass rates because 26 percent is very low And then we've got three more exams to go Financial fellowship had a pass rate of only 17 percent Yeah, this one is this one's a tricky one. Like I said took me three attempts to get that Then the general fellowship comes in at 14 percent But the worst exam the one where people did the worst Was the pension fellowship and that had a pass rate of zero percent Zero wow look it was also the The less popular exam only four people wrote it Uh, but it had zero percent pass rate. So there goes that myth of oh, you know, it's the bulk of they have to pass You know so many people Pensions they were like nah nah this this exam. I don't know maybe the exam was in bad mood when he wrote it He's like I'm gonna give them impossible questions Because y'all no one was able to pass that zero percent And that we sometimes do see that you do sometimes come across exams that have a zero percent pass rate Very rarely will there be a hundred percent pass rate because then I think maybe they will Adjust the pass mark so that you know, not everybody passes um But y'all when you can see it's not like the other way around if the examiner feels that no one is worthy No one's worthy. It's not like they have to pass a certain number But y'all that is the pass rates For the actuarial exams written here in South Africa for the first semester of 2019 It's going to be interesting to see Whether my little workshop that I do Look, I mean 26 percent is the target to beat. Um, I mean it should be easy to beat But I want to see if I can actually get financial engineering after my workshop and put it as number one Let's see if we can get the highest pass rate for financial engineering. That's going to be a little bit of a challenge Um, but like I say if you're writing some of these other subjects, I do have videos on youtube Actuarial statistics is on you to me. And if you're doing financial instruments Um, especially the fellowship or the specialist in finance check out my book on amazon Um, and then y'all I think that's all we have time for for this video Let me know your thoughts if you've got any comments write them down below And I'll see you guys soon for another video. Cheers