ASRM Course Updates

Hello Students in Actuarial Science,
As the Fall 2021 term comes to an end, we wanted to emphasize the importance of some of the course offerings for Spring 2022. While many of you may have already completed your course registration, the information below may be of interest to some of you:
ASRM 472
For those students who are studying for SOA/CAS exams, ASRM 472 prepares students for a very significant portion of SOA Exam LTAM and covers core actuarial mathematics that will be the foundation for application in several actuarial career streams. With the coming changes to the SOA curriculum, the course material will be also relevant for the new FAM and ALTAM exam components.
We have observed that some students may be considering ASRM 409 instead of ASRM 472. The course material in ASRM 409 covers approximately 25% of the CAS MAS-I exam and some concepts in STAM such as the poisson process and aggregate compound models. It also covers some concepts in LTAM such as homogeneous/non- homogenous Markov Chain used in multi-state models. Comparatively, ASRM 472 covers the most critical components of the existing LTAM exam and the future ALTAM exam.
ASRM 410
Similarly, students who are studying for SOA/CAS exams, ASRM 410 will prepare students for exam IFM/3F in 2022, with the last sitting in November 2022 before the transition to the new curriculum. If you can pass exam IFM, you will not need to take the new Exam ATPA (Advanced Topics in Predictive Analytics) that will come into effect after the transition. The first offering of Exam ATPA will be in June 2022.
Our suggestion is that you prepare for Exam IFM as early as possible unless you want to take Exam ATPA instead. The ATPA exam is expected to be more programming focused. Keep in mind that the IFM exam is much more well established than the new exams. There are already more readily available study materials to prepare for this exam, e.g. study manuals, question banks, online exam prep programs, etc. Most new exams introduced by the SOA are advanced levels of existing exams, which we expect may have a higher level of difficulty compared to the exams being removed. We want students to be aware and understand the risks of forgoing the opportunity to prepare for and pass a well-established exam.
One additional note about ASRM 410 for ASRM students interested in concepts of financial mathematic: for students completing the MS program, the restriction on receiving credit for only one of ASRM 410 or ASRM 510 has been removed, so now students can receive degree credit for both courses.
Feel free to reach out to the Actuarial Science Office if you have any questions.
Regards
Paul