Study Schedule – Week 5

The next step in my suggested study schedule is to tackle the material on the Product Development process.  As mentioned in one of the comments on this blog, there are several sources that cover the process, but they all take a slightly different approach. 

In past exams, the questions have tended to be specific enough that they are tied to a single part of the syllabus.  Thus, I don’t think that it’s crucial to try to reconcile all of the different sources together.  For now, I would just work through each of the individual sources and understand each list on its own.  After I have completed all of my recordings, I plan to re-visit this topic and provide a combined summary of all of the different lists.

With that as the background, here is the information that I suggest you try to cover in Week 5:

Product Development (Life Insurance Products & Finance – Chap. 2) – A.4.1

Product Development Process (ILA-DP101, ILA-DP111, LOMA 11) – A.4.2

World Class New Product Development (ILA-DP100) – A.4.3

The Role of the Actuary in Product Roll-out (ILA-DP803) – A.4.4

The Process of Premium Formulation (Published Reference) – A.4.5

Good Luck with your studying!!

 Jeremy

Study Schedule – Week 4

The Study Schedule for Week 3 included some longer study notes that cover a variety of different Life and Annuity products.  For Week 4, I’m recommending that you cover the more detailed information that is found in several of the Published References. 

Six of the published references go into additional details about more recent products.  These items are included in Section A.3 of my Outline of the material.  The articles are pretty easy to read, but there is a lot of information included in these short articles.

The specific published references to cover are as follows:

   Recent Developments in the Annuity World (A.3.1)

   Equity Indexed UL:  The Devil’s in the Details (A.3.2)

   Whither the VA? (A.3.3)

   VUL Secondary Guarantees (A.3.4)

   Return of Premium Term (A.3.5)

   LTCI Combination Products (A.3.6)

Good luck with these sessions and let me know if you have any questions.

Jeremy

Study Schedule – Week 3

In my original “Study Schedule” post, I discussed that it may be helpful to focus on the marketing material first.  I set aside 2 weeks for this material, but it easily could take longer.

If you’ve completed the marketing material, the next section that I recommend is to get an overview of the different product types that are available.  This information can be found in a couple of very LONG study notes.  ILA-D101 and ILA-D105.  Combined, these study notes are over 200 pages, and they take a little while to read. 

In my online sessions, I’ve tried to reduce the overlap between these two notes and cover everything in a consistent manner.  The sessions (A.2.1 and A.2.2) are still very long, but they should be a good summary of the material.

Once you’ve covered these two study notes, you can move on to the study note covering Equity Indexed Annuities, ILA-D102.  This note is fairly well-written, but it takes awhile to grasp the concepts if you’ve never seen them before.  Again, I take a slightly different approach in my session (A.2.3) to try to make this more understandable.

In summary, here’s what you can cover in Week 3:

Sessions A.2.1 & A.2.2

     ILA-D101 & ILA-D105

Session A.2.3

     ILA-D102

Enjoy!

Jeremy

Study Schedule – Weeks 1-2

Someone made a request recently that I post a study schedule since I am recording the sessions in a different order from the syllabus outline that I developed. That is definitely a fair request, so I will plan to give you an outline of what will be coming up in the recordings so that you can plan accordingly.

Here’s my suggested schedule for the first two weeks of studying:

Overview of Life Insurance — Life Insurance Products & Finance – Chapter 1 (A.1.1)

Marketing – General (E.1)

Life & Health Ins. Marketing (LOMA) Chapters 5-9

Marketing for Actuaries (LIMRA) Chapter 1-3

Marketing – Distribution (E.2)

LOMA 15-17, LIMRA 4-6

Marketing – Customers (E.3)

LOMA 13-14

That’s probably a little more than 2 weeks worth of studying, but at least it gives you a starting point. I’ll plan to post the next schedule in a couple of weeks.

Happy Studying!!

Jeremy