Free Exam FAM Sample Questions: 262 SOA Items Across Short- and Long-Term (2026)

FAM is two exams sharing a sitting. The short-term half covers loss models, credibility, frequency and severity, the long-term half covers survival models, life insurance pricing and multi-state models, and the two need different ways of thinking. Candidates who treat it as one exam and alternate concepts day by day tend to underperform, and candidates who run two parallel study tracks tend to pass.

The SOA's 262 published sample questions split roughly evenly between the halves. FreeFellow has all 262 free, with the worked solution next to each item, results tracked by topic, and the ones you miss brought back. The FAM samples need a free account (no credit card), and you can preview them before you sign up.

The 262 items by topic

Aggregate loss problems almost always run a compound Poisson against a specific severity distribution, then ask for the variance of S, the stop-loss premium at a fixed retention, or the probability that S exceeds a threshold. Bühlmann problems lean hard on pulling n out of a data structure that hides it (a credibility-weighted estimator combined with a hypothetical mean). Multi-state problems favor three-state setups (alive, disabled, dead) where you compute a transition probability or a discounted expected value.

FAM is the first exam where you have to think like an actuary rather than a mathematician, and the samples put you straight into its traps: a Poisson rate that varies by class with unequal class sizes (a Bühlmann-Straub setup), a survival function with a piecewise hazard that changes at age 80, a multi-state model where you have to notice the transitions are time-homogeneous before you reach for the constant-force shortcut. It also has more "did you read the stem carefully" questions than any other preliminary, like inflation adjustments to deductibles, coverage modifications per claim versus per policy year, and mortality assumptions that change at a specific age. The SOA writes these to catch candidates who pattern-match instead of reading.

Studying the two halves

Study them in parallel, alternating weeks between FAM-S and FAM-L instead of finishing one before you start the other. Both take time to sink in, and parallel tracks give each one more time between sessions.

Drill Bühlmann until it's automatic. The credibility weight $Z = n/(n + k)$, the Bühlmann-Straub version with class-size weighting, and the partial-credibility predictor all come down to one problem shape the SOA keeps returning to. Drill the formula, then drill spotting it in the data, like pulling n out of a stem that says "we observed average claim severity of X over Y class-years."

Derive every life insurance formula from first principles once, then memorize. The shortcuts for whole life, term and endowment insurance and the status notations all come from the same expected value of a discounted payoff, so the derivation is how you understand them and memorizing them afterward is how you get fast.

The set runs short in three places. It leans on three-state models, while the exam can use four or more states (healthy, mild disability, severe disability, dead). Dependent frequency and severity, common in practice, gets light coverage, so use textbook exercises (Klugman/Panjer/Willmot). Pension-style joint-life problems with reversions are light too, and the FreeFellow original FAM bank covers them.

Where else to find them

If you're comparing the paid ones, check what each covers and how long access lasts, since a manual and a subscription aren't the same kind of purchase.

For a week-by-week plan, see How to Pass Exam FAM in 4 Months. ASTAM is the written-answer exam that builds on FAM, and its samples are in Free Exam ASTAM Sample Questions.