Preparations continue for the year end work. I've been working on some developments which will improve our current processes. Hopefully making the processes of generating tables and retrieving results quicker with fewer margins for error.

The week has been a good one, on Thursday my team managed to avoid coming last in the Actuarial Quiz (which was a relief as the losers hold the next one). It's reassuring to know that a good knowledge of Friends, Harry Potter and Girl's Aloud has its uses for every Actuary!

The coming week should also be a good one, I'm attending a tutorial in London on Thursday which should give my study progress a huge boost, and have Friday off work to give me a long weekend in London. I can't wait!

Back to work after the Christmas holidays! I've done well in keeping my New Year’s resolution of getting into work early for two days running – it's impressive stuff! Fingers crossed I'll be good and keep it up!

We are now in year end, which is the busiest period of the year. I need some changes to be made to a model so the next week or two will be spent testing my changes to make sure that there definitely won't be any surprises when they are brought into the live model.

Once I've completed my work on this, the next big task is to calculate the ICA (The amount of money HBOS FS need to hold in order to ensure they stay solvent in a 1 in 200 year event) as at the end of 2007. I joined my current team towards the completion of the mid year ICA so this time I have a better understanding of the process and will be able to get much more involved.