Some issues the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries ought to clarify for anyone considering standing for election to its Council

This is a follow up to my previous post on this (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/questions-institute-faculty-actuaries-doesnt-want-anyone-lee), to provide a bit more detail and to answer some questions that I have been asked.

Allegations of online exam cheating rings operating again

The allegations (made on the Reddit r/actuaryUK group, see https://www.reddit.com/r/ActuaryUK/comments/u6kx25/open_help_call_the_guy_asking_for_the_paper_early/) are that because the IFoA, instead of only holding a single sitting of each exam paper, apparently holds 3 or 4 staggered sttings of the same paper (e.g. starting at 0800 BST, then 0830 BST, then 0900 BST), some students sitting earlier time slots are sending a copy of the paper to students sitting a later time slot, who thus can have up to 30 or 60 minutes advance knowledge of the questions.

Something similar happened in 2020 and the IFoA apparently disciplined hundreds of students (banning them from taking IFoA exams for periods ranging from 3 to 24 months). This was under what it calls its Assessment Regulations violations process which unlike its Disciplinary Scheme process has no transparency. No statistics seem to be published, so students, employers and Council members -let alone other IFoA members- alike are in the dark as to what proportion of students were alleged to have cheated, how many were judged to have no case to answer, and how many were found to have violated the rules, and if so in what way, and what was the sanction.

It is also alleged that the IFoA did not discipline one or more of the alleged ringleaders of the cheating rings in 2020, despite this person (or persons) being not only an IFoA member but an actuarial tutor, a member of its 400 Club (a group of volunteers for the IFoA to sound out for their views/feedback) and an IFoA careers ambassador.

Things that seem wrong to me include:

• the IFoA's silence in response to the allegations that cheating rings have re-emerged
• the lack of transparency regarding the Assessment Regulations violations process
• the IFoA's failure to respond to the allegations that it failed to discipline the 2020 ringleader (again transparency might have cleared this up)
• the lack of any readily available published explanation from the IFoA as to why it needs to have so many sittings for the same paper. From the reddit r/actuaryuk group, students seem to have been told different things a) that it is because of a shortage of resources (e.g. the IFoA website couldn't cope with thousands of scripts all being uploaded at the same time at the end if a single sitting, or the IFoA staff couldn't cope with the likely support issues [e.g. "help - my internet connection has just gone down"]) and b) that it is to try and find time slots which minimise the inconvenience to students having to sit the exam in the middle of their normal sleeping time (so since most IFoA students live in time zones with GMT+ 0 to 11 hours [the latter including New Zealand and Australia], choosing start times of 0800 to 0900 BST is said to inconvenience the smallest number of students, namely those in the US or Bahamas, for whom the start time is very early in the morning). Explanation b) makes no sense to me, because it doesn't require 3 or 4 different sittings, with the attendant risk of cheating.

The IFoA has had 2 years to sort out its online exam system yet it seems to be behaving like a rabbit caught in headlights, refusing to budge or to acknowledge any problems. (Alleged plagiarism is another problem which has worried many students, since they have been forced to cope with often confusing changes in guidance as to how to answer bookwork/definition questions. A lot of this seems silly because definitions/legislation are meant to be quoted accurately and in real life this is often looked up. So forcing students to change sensible wording into wording that still conveys the meaning without risking falling foul of anti-plagiarism software seems over the top. As I've said previously on discussion forums, I think the IFoA should either improve its questions - make them less of a memory test - or allow definitions/bookwork to be copied (as they are often in real life into actuarial reports), or have online proctoring of its exams - as indeed the Indian Institute of Actuaries apparently do, and I can attest that Microsoft does this for its professional exams.

What has happened to the 2020 member satisfaction survey?

For a membership organisation to ask members for feedback but then to hide the results is pretty damning. The IFoA hopes that this mystery will just go away/be forgotten about. Why? What is it hiding?

How much has funding its senior lawyers' defences against allegations of professional misconduct cost already and how much more is likely to be needed?

How many complaints (about itself or its staff) has the IFoA received in recent years/what were the outcomes/what is the trend?

What are the prospects for success in the various court cases the IFoA is involved in?

The above are again problems which are linked to and exacerbated by the IFoA's lack of transparency.

Without answers to these and disclosure of any other problems, it seems wrong of the IFoA to expect members to take on the responsibility of standing for its Council. Would a company really expect individuals to join its Board (the analogy the IFoA itself makes on its website for prospective candidates) while keeping them in the dark about significant matters?

Unless the IFoA's problems are being much exaggerated, becoming a Council member could be a bit of a poisoned chalice.