This requirement only applies to Institute students who joined after 9 June 1975 and before 1 July 2004

Application forms

1. Basic requirement
All members joining the Institute on or after 9 June 1975 are required to have at least three years' experience of actuarial work before being admitted to the Fellowship. For this purpose the date of completing the examinations is taken as the date of the applicable pass list. Acceptable work will normally be carried out under the direct supervision of the holder of a recognised actuarial qualification. The criteria applied for approved experience will be the same, irrespective of the country of residence of the member.
In what follows the term 'applicant' is used to cover Students or Associates seeking to fulfil the experience qualification.

2. Actuarial work
For the purposes of 1., actuarial work is defined as being the application of economic, financial and statistical principles to practical problems. In judging the quality and breadth of the work done, the Institute will expect the work of the applicant to have covered several areas of actuarial practice.

3. Supervision
The intention of the supervision is to ensure that the applicant is adequately exposed to the practical application of actuarial work and to a professional environment. To this end the supervisor will need to be in a position to guide the applicant and to exercise some control over this work.

3.1   Where the direct supervisor of the applicant is a qualified actuary, and the work described in 2 is being carried out in one of the following:
(i) a life assurance office or general insurance office
(ii) the Government Actuary's Department
(iii) a firm of consulting actuaries
(iv) a firm of stockbrokers
(v) a firm of pension consultants or such other organisations or part thereof as the Institute may from time to time approve, no prior Institute approval of the proposed programme of work by the applicant is required. The supervisor will be expected to ensure, however, that the experience covers a range of actuarial work, consistent with the activities of actuaries within the organisation concerned. The appropriate form, detailing experience, should be completed and forwarded to the Registrar on completion of the examinations or the completion of the Requirement, whichever is later. The applicant should confirm with the Registrar for work experience that his/her employer is registered as an approved supervisor.

3.2 Where the supervisor is not a qualified actuary and/or the work being done, whilst falling within the ambit of 2., is not being carried out in one of the offices listed in 3.1, the applicant is expected to seek prior approval of the work experience he/she is undergoing. This applies both to experience before completing the examinations and to that afterwards. The Institute will be prepared to make this assessment and give a ruling, any such approval to last for not more than twelve months at a time. In making this assessment, the Institute needs to have evidence that the work meets the criteria of 2., and that the supervision will be of sufficient stature to justify its acceptability to the Institute. Application should be made to the Registrar.

4. Continuity of experience
The three years' experience of actuarial work does not have to be continuous but may be made up of a number of separate periods.

5. Discretion
Institute has the authority to waive some or all of these requirements in exceptional cases, e.g. for those who have relevant experience and have completed the examinations of another recognised actuarial body.

6. Certification
The Institute will provide applicants with the appropriate forms on which to register their experience. These forms should be completed to summarise the work done, and authenticated by an actuary or the agreed supervisor as indicating direct knowledge and approval of the work that has been carried out. For those members falling within the scope of 3.1 the appropriate form should be forwarded to the Registrar for work experience for approval at the time of completion of the examinations or when the total experience requirement has been completed. For those members falling under the scope of 3.2 the forms should be completed and forwarded to the Registrar for work experience for approval at least annually until the required experience requirement has been fulfilled.

7. Guidance notes
Guidance notes on the experience qualification are available from the Registrar for work experience and all supervisors are strongly recommended to study these. The Institute will give guidance in cases where the applicant or supervisor has doubts about the programme of work or the acceptability of a supervisor. Queries should be directed in the first instance to the officer for work experience.