It’s a new beginning for actuary aspirants

Wannabe actuaries are in for a testing time, literally.
In its eagerness to ensure that only the best and brightest students get to complete its courses and compete for jobs, the Institute of Actuaries of India (IAI) has stopped giving memberships to new students from July 3 this year and plans to implement a whole new enrolment process by January, including an entrance test.

The institute feels many of the students who have managed to pass its professional exams lack the skills and aptitude required for an actuary’s job.

“Both life and non-life industry put together, only around 2,500 actuaries can be accommodated in this industry. Currently, the supply of professionals is more than the demand. Not a single fully qualified actuary is jobless, but students who are partially qualified are huge in number and are therefore jobless,” said G N Agarwal, chief actuary, Future Generali India Life Insurance Co Ltd.

As on date, the institute has only 236 registered actuaries, but well over 11,000 student members.

As such, completing the actuarial course is deemed rather difficult, with a pass percentage of 2-7% depending on the paper, far more difficult than courses like chartered accountancy, though the lure of a starting salary of `1 crore and more that a full-fledged actuary earns draws thousands every year to try their luck.   

The enrolment procedure being sought to be implemented could make it that much harder for the students.
Aspirants will now have to come through an entrance examination, said Liyaquat Khan, president, Institute of Actuaries of India, Mumbai.

“Candidates who wish to take new membership will have to wait till next year. Despite the degree they are holding, be it a Plus Two student or a PhD, the candidate should get through the entrance test and it will be driven by companies like Aptech,” he said.
The exam will test the candidates’ candidates’ ability and aptitude in actuarial mathematics and statistics and is expected to bring down the rate of dropouts the institute has witnessed in recent years — those short on capability and passion will be weeded out at this stage.

The course module has been prepared in the UK, said Khan. The online entrance tests would be conducted at 48 centres across the country and the institute plans to put in place an online coaching mechanism after January 2012.

“The skills required for this profession are more important than merely passing the papers. A wide trend witnessed is that students tend to confine themselves to the study material provided by the institute and manage to pass the papers. This trend is not healthy. Actuarial aspirants must possess good knowledge in information technology, reasoning ability and logical aptitude,” said Manish Srivastava, assistant professor of actuarial science at Amity University.

As in the accountancy courses, an actuarial aspirant has to first become a student member of the IAI. The course runs in three stages. Student members who have passed the nine papers in the CT series and all papers in the CA series are eligible to become associate members of the institute. An associate member is admitted as a fellow member subject to meeting certain eligibility criteria: he or she must have cleared any two out of six papers in the ST series and any one out of six in the SA series, must have attended the two-day India Fellowship Seminar on India specific legislation, environments, practices and professionalism, and must have stipulated work experience.