The CAS Exam 5 seminar is 4½ days (8 am to 5 pm the first four days, ending at noon the last day),taught by Mr Sholom Feldblum, FCAS, FSA, CFA, CPCU (2 days) and Howard Mahler (2½ days). Tuition for the seminar is $485, payable to New England Actuarial Seminars. The seminar will be held twice::

• At the Crowne Plaza ( formerly the Holiday Inn) in Rosemont, IL, March 6 - 10, 2008.

•    At the Sheraton Hotel at Woodbridge Place in Iselin, New Jersey, March 20 - 24, 2008.

Exam 5 is a broad examination, covering ratemaking and policy forms for all lines of business. Candidates without work experience in the more complex lines, such as workers’ compensation and general liability, find the readings difficult to master. The seminar covers the full syllabus, emphasizing the recent additions and complex papers. Seminar participants receive extensive study material from both instructors, with 1,650+ pages and 1,050+ practice problems

Sholom Feldblum has taught Exam 5 (ratemaking) and Exam 9 (advanced ratemaking) to more than 2,125 candidates over the past twelve years. He has been a member of the CAS Syllabus Committee for 11 years and recently completed a second term on the CAS Board of Directors. He is the author of Personal Automobile Premiums and Workers’ Compensation Ratemaking.

Howard Mahler is the former Vice President and Actuary at the Workers’ Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts, and he is a past Chairman of the CAS Examination Committee. He has published extensively in actuarial journals, including over a dozen papers in the Proceedings of the Casualty Actuarial Society, and he was the recipient of the 1987 CAS Dorweiler prize. He has papers on the Joint Course 4 syllabus and the CAS Exam 9 syllabus.

The Recommended Study Schedule gives you an efficient study order, based on the benefit per hour of study time for each reading. It distills years of teaching experience into an efficient guide through the syllabus, with dozens of study recommendations to optimally prepare you for the examination. The study schedule saves you weeks of wasteful wandering – of slowly getting acquainted with the syllabus – and enables you to focus on study with the maximum benefit.

The step-by-step guides to the mathematical procedures provide clear instructions for solving almost all the likely 2008 exam problems on the difficult topics. Mastering the step-by-step guides makes your exam solutions brief and exact, optimizing your chances of passing the exam.

Mahler’s extensive Students’ Guides and the comprehensive study aids by Feldblum cover the entire syllabus, explaining each topic that may be tested on the exam and giving hundreds of practice problems to ensure you are prepared.

For optimal exam preparation, participate in the on-line Exam 5 seminar (on the NEAS discussion forums) from its inception in December 2007 through the final week of study in April 2008. For full information, see the section on the on-line seminars in this brochure and on the NEAS web site.

The outline of the seminar sessions is shown below. Session 1 through 4 are taught by Mr Sholom Feldblum; sessions 5 through 9 are taught by Mr. Howard Mahler

1. Pricing Factors: claim frequency by duration and class; young male transient drivers; direct writers vs independent agency companies; distributions systems and expense ratios; termination rates and probabilities of termination; pivotal rates
2. Running an asset-share model: short-term vs long-term profits; business expansion; adjusting for fixed expenses; present value of profits ÷ present value of premium; other profit measures
3. Rate relativities: expense flattening and retention rates; policy vs coverage basis; persistency by class; coverage combinations and increased limits; corrected rate relativities
4. Competitive strategy: retired driver discounts; price elasticity of demand; policy duration and policyholder age; competitive strategy
5. CPCU on personal auto: financial responsibility; unsatisfied judgment funds; uninsured and underinsured motorist; monetary vs verbal threshold; add-on plans; choice no-fault; PIP; modified no-fault; class credits and surcharges

1. Statewide ratemaking: exposure bases (total payroll, limited payroll, and man-hours); manual, standard, and net premium; adjustments for non-level writings; policy year vs calendar year premium development; loss development tail factors; monetary inflation and benefit trends; internal data vs inflation indices; trend periods; utilization changes
2. Law Amendments: calculating the direct effects; replacement rates and effective compensation rates; waiting periods and claim severity; COLAs; maximum and minimum limits; wage loss systems; the effective compensation rate schematic; incentive effects; durations of disability; elasticities; employer and employee incentives; compensating differentials; claimant characteristics; loss ratio trends
3. Boor on Complement of Credibility: Harwayne’s method; reduction factors; bias vs accuracy; national pure premiums; trended present rates; the "C" factor; excess ratemaking; lower limits analysis; other types of limits analysis; approximations for sparse data.
4. CPCU on workers’ compensation: employers’ liability; common law defenses; coverages and exclusions; financing; administration; third-party claims; the federal laws; LHWCA; the WC&EL policy; other states insurance; foreign coverage

1. Graves and Castillo: monoline vs multiline data; premiums at present manual rates; ISO rates and company deviations; exposure trends; implicit package modification factors; ALAE and ULAE; K factor; credibility for loss development; tail factors; adjusted link ratios; net trend factors
2. Statewide indications: credibility by subline; trending the expected loss ratio; the "C" factor
3. Classification rates: off-balance factors; credibility; exponential rule; order of adjustments
4. Palmer on increased limit factors: frequency, severity, and policy limit assumptions; single plaintiff vs multiple plaintiff limits; censored losses; average severities by layer; trend by layer of loss (leveraging); using empirical data: censorship, excess (umbrella) coverage, trend, development, loss distributions, random fluctuations; continuous distributions: lognormal, Pareto, truncated Pareto; steps of the ISO mixed exponential method: application of trend, empirical survival distributions by payment lag, overall empirical survival distribution, smoothing the tail, fitting a mixed exponential distribution; loss adjustment expenses; risk loads; practical considerations
5. CPCU on general liability: sources of legal liability; negligence and defenses; types of torts; contracts and statutes; CGL policy; occurrence definition and triggers; dual capacity; third-party-over; contractual liability; fire legal liability; products and completed operations; pollution
6. CPCU on umbrella policies: excess vs umbrella; layering; following form; specific vs aggregate excess; uses of umbrella policies; SIR’s
7. Professional Liability: contractual duties and tort liabilities; covered acts; defenses; triggers; medical malpractice; allegations and defenses; insuring agreements; policy provisions

1. Compensation Pricing: involuntary markets; operating losses; funding the pool; schematic of the pool system; rate adequacy, competition, and class refinement; residual market burden; payment speed in the pools; administrative effects on pool size; expense constants; loss constants; loss ratios by size of risk; premium discounts; guarantee fund assessments; second injury funds; no-dependancy death claims
2. Classification systems: industry vs occupation; workforce attributes; age and sex differences; group health benefits; rich vs poor plans; territory; financial strength; recessions; unit stat plan; partial pure premiums: serious, non-serious, and medical; underlying, indicated, and national pure premiums; three way class credibility; expected losses vs claim counts; the three halves rule; occupational diseases; report year and calendar year effects; loss costs
3. CPCU on Insurance Contracts: void vs voidable contract; offer, counteroffer, and acceptance; genuine assent; legal consideration; unilateral contracts; contracts of adhesion; conditional contracts; utmost good faith; concealment and misrepresentation; valued policies; insurable interest; subrogation
4. CPCU on Policy Structure: self-contained, modular, and manuscript policies; ambiguities; collateral documents; insuring agreement; coverage extensions; supplementary payments; exclusions; moral hazard; morale hazard
5. CPCU on Policy Provisions: assignment; benefit to bailee; separation of interests; concealment, misrepresentation, and fraud
6. CPCU on Coverage Disputes: reservation of rights; declaratory judgment action; nonwaiver agreement; unconscionable advantage; reasonable expectations; substantial performance; waiver and estoppel; collateral and judicial estoppel

1. McClenahan: fixed vs variable expenses; basic limits vs excess limits trend; pure premium vs loss ratio ratemaking; classification ratemaking

1. Bouska: exposure bases and class dimensions; workers’ compensation and general liability; temporal mismatch; interpretive mismatch
2. Schofield: Going from a pure premium to a rate.
3. Werner: Incorporation of Fixed Expenses.
4. Jones on Premium Trend
5. Anderson on insurance to value: distributions of loss sizes and loss percentages; formulas for pure premium rates; coinsurance clauses and premium rates.

Session VII: Classification Ratemaking; Catastrophe Ratemaking;; Deductibles

1. Kelley, Homeowners Insurance to Value
2. Finger on Classification Ratemaking:
3. Walters, Catastrophe Ratemaking:
4. Brown and Schmitz on deductibles.

1. Marker and Mohl: occurrence, claims-made, and tail policies; backwards recursive loss reserving; Marker and Mohl matrix; ratemaking principles for claims-made policies.
2. Boor: Insurance Market Place and Underwriting Cycles
3. Bourdon et. al. on Capitation and Health Care Provided Excess Insurance.

1. Tiller-Sherwood: experience rating, retrospective rating, schedule rating; ISO and NCCI plans; formula parameters and credibility weights
2. CAS Statement of Principles: sound actuarial rates, homogeneity and credibility.
3. Standard of Practice on Trending.
4. Prevosto on ISO statistical plans.
5. Moncher on NCCI data collection calls and statistical plans.