CAS Exam 5 is a 4-hour exam split close to evenly between ratemaking (45-55%) and estimating claim liabilities (45-55%), and it's the first CAS exam graded mostly on written answers. Ratemaking means setting a rate that isn't excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory. Reserving means estimating what the insurer still owes on claims that have already happened. Almost every P&C actuarial job sits on one side of that line, so this is the first exam where the syllabus matches the day-to-day work.
The earlier exams (P, FM, MAS-I and MAS-II) have no written answers. From Exam 5 on, you write the answer and a grader reads it. Since October 2023 the CAS has delivered Exam 5 in seven item types, from multiple choice and matching to spreadsheet tasks, but most items are still constructed response, where you type the answer and show your work. Exam 7 builds on its reserving techniques and Exam 8 on its classification and individual risk rating material, so anything you skim here comes back on those exams.
FreeFellow's Exam 5 material includes 548 original practice questions, walkthroughs of 13 released sittings (326 questions from Spring 2013 through Fall 2019) with the examiner's report sample answers and grader commentary, 38 written lessons and a formula sheet, and all of it is free. The practice questions are multiple-choice checks on the tested concepts, and the walkthroughs are where you practice the written format. The samples work without signing up, and a free account opens the full Exam 5 bank.
What Exam 5 tests
The CAS content outline weights ratemaking and estimating claim liabilities at 45-55% each. FreeFellow's questions and lessons split that into eight topic areas:
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| Topic area | Weight | What's in it |
|---|---|---|
| Ratemaking data and exposures | 8-12% | Criteria for an exposure base, written, earned, unearned and in-force exposures, aggregation by policy year, calendar year, accident year and report year |
| Premium, loss and trend adjustments | 10-14% | Premium at current rate level (extension of exposures, parallelogram), one-step and two-step premium trend, loss development and loss trend without double counting the overlap, ALAE, large-loss and catastrophe loading |
| Overall rate level indications | 12-16% | Pure premium and loss ratio methods and why they have to reconcile, permissible loss ratio, all-variable vs fixed-and-variable expense provisions, profit and contingency, credibility and its complement |
| Classification and alternative rating | 8-12% | Univariate class methods (pure premium, loss ratio, adjusted pure premium), minimum bias and the move to GLMs, ILFs, deductibles, territories, individual risk rating (experience, schedule, retrospective) |
| Principles, implementation and regulation | 5-8% | The CAS Statement of Principles Regarding Property and Casualty Insurance Ratemaking, indicated vs selected rate change, off-balance, non-pricing levers, prior approval vs file-and-use |
| Reserving data and development triangles | 12-16% | Building triangles, selecting age-to-age factors, tail factors, and the diagnostics (paid to reported, closure rates, average case outstanding, frequency and severity) that flag a changing environment |
| Unpaid claim estimation techniques | 18-22% | Development on paid and reported, expected claims, Bornhuetter-Ferguson, Benktander, Cape Cod, frequency-severity including the disposal rate technique, Berquist-Sherman, choosing a method |
| Recoveries, LAE and reserve evaluation | 12-16% | Salvage and subrogation, reinsurance recoverables and ceded triangles, ALAE and ULAE reserving, evaluating an estimate with actual vs expected and retrospective testing |
Unpaid claim estimation is the biggest area at 18-22%, and it rewards judgment more than recall. Run six methods on one triangle and you get six answers. The exam rarely asks which one is right in the abstract. It gives you a scenario, like case reserve strengthening, a settlement speed-up or a coverage change, and asks which method holds up under that distortion and why. Learn each method along with the situation where it breaks.
Studying for a written-answer exam
Most first-time candidates underestimate how much the written format changes the way you have to study. On the preliminaries you recognize the right answer. On Exam 5 you have to produce it, and the grading works differently too.
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| MAS-I and MAS-II | Exam 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Answer | Select or enter the answer | Write the answer and show the work |
| Credit | All or nothing per question | Partial credit, allocated by point |
| What earns points | The right choice | The right method, labeled work, stated assumptions and the explanation the question asks for |
| Grading standard | Answer key | The published examiner's report sample answers and grader commentary |
| Typical mistake | Arithmetic slip | Answering a "discuss" or "justify" question with only a number |
| Pacing | Minutes per question | Minutes per point |
Read the verb first. "Calculate" wants a number with the work shown, "briefly describe" wants two or three labeled points rather than a paragraph, and "justify" wants a reason tied to the data in front of you. Each carries its own points, so a perfect calculation with no justification gets partial credit.
Label every step. A grader can only give credit for a step they can find, so unlabeled intermediate numbers earn nothing once the final answer is wrong, while a labeled development factor or trend period often still scores.
The examiner's report shows the length, detail and wording that scored. Candidates tend to write too much on the explanation parts and too little on the assumptions, and comparing your answers with the sample answers fixes both faster than rereading does.
How many hours, and how to spend them
Candidates and prep providers usually say 300 to 350 hours if you've recently passed MAS-II and work in P&C pricing or reserving, 350 to 450 if you've finished the preliminaries without P&C work experience, and 150 to 250 for a resit after a near miss, spent almost entirely on writing answers. The CAS doesn't publish its own figure. Most people plan 16 weeks at 20 to 30 hours a week. The reading load is heavier than any preliminary and the two halves barely overlap, so people who run short on time usually run short on the reserving half.
The most common mistake is reading instead of writing. Someone who puts 250 of their 350 hours into the source texts and 100 into writing answers usually does worse than someone who flips that split. You don't get points for recognizing that a Berquist-Sherman adjustment applies. You get them for writing out the adjusted triangle, labeling it and stating the assumption behind it, so start writing full answers by week 4, not week 12.
For the 16 weeks, I'd go in syllabus order and start writing early:
- Weeks 1 to 3: ratemaking data, exposures and adjustments. Drill the parallelogram method and extension of exposures until they're mechanical, and watch the overlap between trend and development.
- Weeks 4 to 6: overall rate level and classification. Work the pure premium and loss ratio methods side by side until you can reconcile them, then expenses, credibility, class methods, ILFs, deductibles and individual risk rating. Start writing full answers here.
- Weeks 7 to 8: principles, implementation and regulation. It's the lowest-weight area (5-8%) but the fastest points on the paper, since the questions are mostly list-and-explain. Memorize the ratemaking principles and the implementation levers.
- Weeks 9 to 11: triangles and diagnostics. Practice saying what changed in the book before you touch a method.
- Weeks 12 to 14: unpaid claim estimation (18-22%), writing out where each method fails, then recoveries, ALAE and ULAE, and reserve evaluation.
- Weeks 15 to 16: work the 326 walkthrough questions under time, compare each answer with the examiner's report sample answer, and score yourself against the point allocation rather than by feel. Finish with a 4-hour mock.
Use the 548 practice questions early to make the mechanics automatic, so you can lay out a triangle quickly and structure an indication without hunting for the formula. The 326 walkthroughs matter most, because the examiner's report is the standard your answer gets graded against. The 38 lessons cover the whole syllabus with worked examples and figures, and the Exam 5 formula sheet covers exposure and premium adjustments, the indication formulas, credibility and the estimation methods, as a print-ready PDF.
Fellow adds an original mock sitting on the CAS Exam 5 practice page: 24 constructed-response questions worth 52 points over 4 hours, written by FreeFellow rather than reproduced, so it's still unseen after you've used up the past papers. Fellow also includes spaced-repetition flashcards, topic analytics, a study plan and AI grading of your written answers against the point allocation (five attempts a day), for $39 a month or $79 a quarter per track. The $199 annual plan is Fellow Plus, which removes the daily grading limit and adds Common traps. Prices are in USD, and each subscription covers one credential track. Check pricing for your track and country.
For the next exam, see the Exam 6-U.S. study guide. If you're still on the preliminaries or choosing a path, the MAS-II study guide, SOA vs CAS and the best free actuarial prep resources cover those.
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