The Christmas period has been typically busy with crazy amounts of work whilst preparing for year end and trying to fit in as many social events as possible.

The first set of Actuarial Students' exam results were published last week with more to come next week, there's lots of excitement, and also the feeling that excuses to postpone study have now run out. (I've got some extra exciting Christmas holiday reading material this year – Statistical Methods – can't wait!)

This morning I'm back to reading up on ICA so that I can explain it to others – a task I'm a little apprehensive about. Whilst I understand what I plan to speak about, there are 1000s of possible questions that people might ask so I'm trying to cover all areas. It's also a good excuse to familiarise myself with the FSA handbook.

Other than research, I'm also doing some work on the development of the spreadsheets that we currently use. A quick fix was carried out at mid-year, to incorporate some new businesses into our reporting structure; this involved using different spreadsheets for different business, so I'm trying to consolidate these spreadsheets.

These are of course important, but my #1 priority of the day is to head out for lunch in a few minutes and get some cakes for my team to celebrate my exam passes!

Over the last week I've been continuing my work on change documentation. The models used to generate projected figures are complex and I need to be able to justify the movements of each variable before it can be signed off. I'm looking forward to getting on with some other, much easier tasks when this is completed!

Exam results are now looming, we've just had time to almost forget them, and suddenly it's come to that scary time of year! Once that's out of the way I'll be able to decide exactly which ones I'll be sitting in April and so will have no excuses not to fully concentrate on my study again.

I've recently joined the Actuarial Social committee and had my first meeting today discussing the Actuarial Christmas awards in which we choose from the nominations to remind people of those actuaries who've contributed that something extra over the year. For example, the "Stupid Actuary Award" - I'm not sure whether it sounds like a title worth fighting for!

Now I have had time to recover from my exams, it's approaching the time that I need to do some work on my learning log. This is a fairly controversial initiative from the institute of Actuaries meaning that new students need to keep a written record of their training and development. This requires (amongst other less time consuming components) writing four written answers each year to demonstrate the acquisition of various skills during my time as a student.

Work has been busy lately; I'm trying to iron out and explain all the differences from year end to mid year in the risk work that I'm doing. Some changes were made to the actuarial models over the first half year, so I need to make sure that movements arising from model changes are recorded adequately and are not confused with movements following changes to the data.

I'm looking forward to attending a tutorial tomorrow on Statistical Methods, an exam that I'm planning on sitting in April. Usually if I go on a course it's a revision course, although this time it's a taught course. Hopefully this will make my time spent studying much more effective - I'm quite excited about seeing whether this will be the case!

This week I've been analysing risk and trying to work out the proportion of responsibility that should be assigned to each parts of the company. The company is liable to several different types of risk but currently I am focussing on operational risk. This is roughly the cost of the risks involved with the day to day running of the company. For instance, the risk of the systems going down and how much that would cost, or the risk of not being adequately staffed and hence the unexpected costs arising from contractor's fees. It's been interesting seeing how each risk is allocated (and if there is not already an existing structure, thinking about how it should be allocated).

HBOS have also been spoiling us with social events recently. Last Tuesday, we were treated to drinks and canapés whilst being shown around the new Harbourside building in Bristol that I will be moving into next week - it's highlight for me is definitely the beautiful canal side views. Although the huge open plan working areas and plush meeting rooms are an added bonus.

On Wednesday we had a trip up to the local football ground to watch Actuarial play Accounts, we put up a good fight, but after a crazy number of injuries we conceded two goals in the last 10 minutes of play. We were a little disheartened, but a free dinner afterwards helped to ease the pain. Thursday and Friday were nights of more free food and drinks, the New Starters Buffet and the end of month drinks respectively.

Hopefully this week will be a little quieter - there's a lot of work on at the moment and I don't like staying out on too many school nights!

Over the last two weeks I've been doing work on the Individual Capital Adequacy Standards (ICAS) framework.

We are currently finalising the figures for the board, so I have been carrying out various checks on the figures to ensure that all the information being presented is accurate and can be explained.

The FSA have recently released a paper, "ICAS – Lessons learned and looking ahead to Solvency 2". I'll spend today reading through this document and summarising it. For me it's really good timing, a month ago the letters "ICA" were familiar, but I hadn't done any work linked to it. Being able to spend time reading a document about ICAS, the results and figures of other company's ICA work and the expected future developments has been an opportunity for me to develop a good understanding of the measure which will hopefully set me in good stead for future work.

Now my exams have finished I need to spend time thinking about which courses I would like to study with a view to sitting them in the April session. I also have to update my "learning log", a record of my development and training within the office. To do this I'll need to speak with my boss and decide on two relevant questions to answer.

My exams have now descended. I've sat two papers, with one more to go. I'll be on tenderhooks until results day, which is much too far away.

My first exam, Financial Economics, mostly involved using various methods to price derivatives. Derivatives are financial instruments whose value is derived from the value of something else. Eg. A European Call option, which is the right to buy a share at a set price and date in the future. It's hard to tell how the exam went, half of the exam was almost too easy to believe, and the other half incredibly tough. The pass marks are dependent on how everyone else did, so whilst I think I got a respectable mark, I imagine that there won't be many students scoring less than 60%, in which case, the pass mark gets higher.

In Contingencies, my second exam, I got my perfect paper. The paper was very unusual and concentrated on one topic, whilst ignoring most of the others. Luckily, this was my strongest area so hopefully I have a definite advantage there. Unfortunately I did make a couple of careless mistakes on the big questions so fingers crossed I won't be penalised too heavily for that.

My final paper, Economics is this Friday, so I'm counting down the days until freedom, whilst being fairly sure that I don't have time to count (This one's graphs not numbers!). Lots of people who have taken this before have found this exam okay, but I'm not convinced. It's 40% multiple choice which should be ok, apart from that it's 60% graphs and words. My forte is definitely in numbers and calculations so I'm not looking forward to it.

If these 3 exams go well, I'll have 8 down, and 7 to go, it would be amazing to be the right side of half way through them. However, with pass rates of around 50%, my chances of passing all three are fairly slim (12.5%). For the meantime, I'll be concentrating in getting back into work and reclaiming the social life that I have for 3 months of the 6 month sitting.

Last week I officially finished working on the Forecasting team and have begun work at part of the External Reporting team. My time has been divided between the two roles. Spending time explaining to others how the Forecasting spreadsheets are created, and getting to know my way around the models and spreadsheets that I will be using as part of my new role.

This involves comparing the results from different Prophet runs and accounting for any differences.

My first exam is in 6 days, so study is taking over my life at the moment. I'm taking Contingencies, Economics and Financial Economics which are proving to be very tough to get my head around, but finger's crossed they are coming together in time for the exams!

This week I've spent my time testing the affects of different expense assumptions on profits. This has involved making changes to the current models held on Prophet and creating new runs. As I haven't had much past experience doing this sort of work, there's been a steep learning curve.

As the Actuarial exams are coming up I've also been taking study afternoons. I'm looking forward to a week's holiday next week so that I can relax for the last time before exams descend!

I work on the Forecasting team and our role is to predict where we think the company is headed. Our work is used to identify any areas of the business that might cause problems in the future and to suggest action to avoid these problems. Our predicted profits are also integral to calculating the staff bonuses so it's interesting to keep track of how that's going.

Since joining HBOS in April this year I've had some training on Prophet (A model used by most Actuaries used to project profit. Get the pun? I'm afraid that's a typical example of the Actuarial sense of humour you'll have to get used to..) and using this to do some sensitivity testing. In this case I was measuring to what extent a change in lapse rates will affect profit. More so than Prophet, most Actuaries' No.1 tool is Excel. Most of my work since joining has been updating and analysing information in the forecasting spreadsheets.

The department and my team have been really welcoming. Since joining I've learnt so much about forecasting and HBOS' structure and products, but not without asking 100s of questions. Everyone on my team has gone out of their way to help me get my head around the work that I'm doing and it's really sped up the learning process.