IFoA SA2 study guide
IFoA SA2 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
SA2 Life Insurance is a Specialist Advanced (SA) subject in the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) qualification pathway, aimed at candidates who have completed the earlier Core and Specialist Principle stages and are moving toward Fellowship-level practice in life insurance. It suits actuaries working in, or moving into, life insurance roles - valuation, pricing, capital, risk, product development and reporting - who need to apply technical judgement to realistic business problems rather than recall formulas. Important caveat for anyone searching for exam logistics: the IFoA's own SA2 Life Insurance page for the 2025 exams has been archived. The site states "This page has been archived" and explains that archived pages have been removed as part of digital content updates. The 2025 exams index page is archived too. That means the official source currently publishes no syllabus, format, question count, duration, pass mark or fee for SA2, and we do not invent them here. Topics on this exam: Life insurance. The IFoA SA2 study guide has 1 section and about 406 words.
01Life insurance (SA2): valuation, capital and product judgement
SA2 tests whether you can apply life insurance principles to realistic scenarios: product design, pricing, valuation, capital, risk management and communication. The life domain concentrates on how liabilities are valued, how capital is held against them, and how products such as annuities, protection and with-profits are managed within UK regulation. Products and risks: without-profit protection carries mortality, morbidity and expense risk; annuities carry longevity and reinvestment risk; unit-linked business transfers investment risk but retains expense, persistency and operational risk; with-profits pools investment and other risks and shares surplus through bonuses. Solvency II/UK balance sheet: technical provisions = best-estimate liability (BEL) + risk margin.
406 words, about 2 minMore study resources for IFoA SA2
- Practice questionsUnder a unit-linked life insurance contract, which party bears the investment risk on the policyholder's unit fund?
- FlashcardsActuarial control cycle. A four-stage loop: define the problem, develop assumptions and a model, calculate and test results, then monitor actual experience and revise assumptions.
- Cheat sheetThe actuarial control cycle for a life insurer runs: specify the problem and business context; develop assumptions (demographic, economic, persistency); build the model and calculate results; test sensitivity and reasonableness; then monitor experience and feed deviations back into assumptions.
- Key termsGross premium reserve. The fund an insurer must hold, calculated on the same prudent basis as premiums but including explicit margins for future expenses and profit, to meet future policy obligations.
- Study planMap the SA2 syllabus against your existing SP2/CT5 knowledge and list every gap area with a confidence rating.
- Common mistakesCandidates memorise standard product lists and reproduce them under time pressure, treating the question as a recall prompt rather than a case.
- Exam-day guideSA2 (Life Insurance Specialist Principles) is delivered by the IFoA, but sitting arrangements, the online proctoring or test-centre provider, and the exact list of permitted reference material can change between sessions.