Financial Economic Theory - Overview

The Financial Economic Theory and Engineering exam is the DP (Design / Pricing) exam for both the Finance & ERM and the Investment tracks. The exam will be offered for the third time on October 29th, 2009. They syllabus has been changed from the 2008 version.

This examination consists of six hours of written-answer questions. A read-through time will be given prior to the start of the exam, 15 minutes in the morning session and 15 minutes in the afternoon session. The syllabus for this exam is very large (over 2000 pages) even relative to prior essay exams (e.g. Course 6 had about 1500 pages).

If you have not taken an essay exam of the Society of Actuaries, I encourage you to read a couple articles from The Future Actuary (Volume 8, Number 1, February/March 1999). One is entitled "Dedicated graders ensure exam process works" and the other is "Common errors graders see". It can easily be found on by searching on the SOA website (www.soa.org). It is important you focus on the exam as well as the syllabus.