During the CAS Board of Directors meeting held March 7-8, the Board approved a proposal by the Examination Committee to offer Exams 5 and 6 twice a year beginning in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

The increased offerings of Associate-level examinations will afford candidates the opportunity to complete the membership requirements more quickly than under the current structure in which Exams 5 and 6 are only offered once per year.

For the past several years, all preliminary actuarial exams (Exams 1-4) have been offered multiple times per year, and the Board had directed the Examination Committee to explore offering the next two CAS exams in the basic education system twice a year.

The Examination Committee considered the logistical challenges in increasing the examination offerings. The Committee’s proposal to the Board addressed issues such as:

• Producing enough quality test items for two exams each year.


• Ensuring consistency between both sittings of the exams.


• Ensuring appropriate syllabus coverage with two sittings per year.


• Identifying changes that would need to be made to existing organizational structure and development schedules.

The Examination Committee released three exam questions that were written for inclusion on the May 2012 examinations but were set aside for educational purposes.

As previously announced, the Casualty Actuarial Society Board of Directors charged the Examination Committee with transitioning more questions over time to correspond to higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. For background on this initiative, please refer to the Future Fellows articles from December 2010 and December 2011.

One example question with higher Bloom’s levels from each of the Spring 2012 Exams 5, 7, and 9 was released, along with a sample answer, to demonstrate the kinds of questions candidates can expect to see on the exams and the type of responses that are expected for these types of questions.
Continued...