Important Dates and Deadlines for the 2009 FRM Examination
Thursday, September 17, 2009
August 31, 2009 (11:59pm) - Last day to defer your 2009 FRM Exam registration to 2010 (USD $100 fee)
August 31, 2009 (11:59pm) - Last day to switch your exam format (USD $100 fee)
August 31, 2009 (11:59pm) - Last day to request an Alternative Date for Religious Reasons
August 31, 2009 (11:59pm) - Last day to request special accommodations for ADA
August 31, 2009 (11:59pm) - Last day to submit an application for a scholarship
October 15, 2009 - Last day to request an exam site change (no fee)
October 20, 2009 (12:00pm)- Admission Ticket information sent via email
October 30, 2009 - Last day to request an exam site change (USD $100 fee)
November 21, 2009 - FRM Exam Day
January 5, 2010 (12:00pm) - 2009 FRM Exam results released
An example of what to expect on FRM Exam Day for Level I:
8:00am - Doors open for check-in
8:45am - Doors will close (no late arrivals will be admitted) and exam instructions are read
9:00am - Exam begins
10:30am - 30 minutes remaining announcement
10:55am - 5 minutes remaining announcement
11:00am - Morning session ends
12:45pm - Check back in for the Afternoon session
1:15pm - Exam doors close (no late arrivals admitted) and exam instructions are read
1:30pm - Afternoon session begins
3:00pm - 30 minutes remaining announcement
3:25pm - 5 minutes remaining announcement
3:30pm - Afternoon session ends
posted @ 11:45 AM,
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How To Prepare For The FRM Exam
Saturday, August 8, 2009
- 5 to 6 months of preparation time: FRM® Exam is a very tough exam, a reasonable estimate to prepare for the exam would be 200 hours for every Level or 400 hrs for Full exam. Depending on an individual's academic background and work experience, preparation for the exam would take approximately 5 to 6 months.
- Books to refer: GARPTM suggests that "FRM® Core Readings" and the Phillip Jorian Handbook should be referred for preparing for the Exam. Also one can refer to the Summarised material (Pristine Comprehensive Notes, Scheweser Notes, bionoc turtle etc). Summarised material may reduce your preparation time, but the Core readings & Phillip Jorian should be referred from time to time incase you are unable to solve the questions on a particular topic.
- How to allocate time: 70% of the preparation time should be spend on understanding the concepts and reviewing the material. 30% of the time should be spend on practicing last year question papers.
- Important Topics: it’s very difficult to say, as they cover almost all the topics , but do not leave the topics given below: VAR( practice all the online questions: last year around 20 questions on VAR) , Current events, Securitization & CDO (last year around 15+ questions), Linear regression, RAROC, Option pricing, Option Greeks, Duration & convexity, Swaps( practice atleast 2 questions), Credit Derivatives, Marginal & Cumulative probability in Credit risk, Expected Loss , Portfolio Variance Calculation, correlation & Covariance, Probability distributions, Skewness & Kurtosis , Normal Distribution ( how to calculate z, and area between two points), hedging with futures ( all the formulas for hedge ratio), Foreign exchange, Clean and Dirty price of bond (solve example), Put Call parity ( solve example),Delta Gamma hedging in options ( solve example), All ratios in portfolio management, Netting in credit risk, Rating migration in Credit Risk( solve example on what is the probability a bond will move from a rating to default status), Merton & KMV model, Credit exposure, Economic Capital, Basel guidelines, Loss distribution Approach in operational Risk, Beta, HFLS and LFHS risks, bottom up & Top down approach.
- Pattern of the exam: The exam is a practice – oriented exam , so they will normally test you on your concepts & fundamentals , around 40% questions may be on problem solving , even the theory questions are conceptual and cannot be answered by merely memorizing .
- The Calculators: HP or Texas, both are available in the market, the main functions that you have to practice are exponential, log and bond valuation( PV, NPV, FV, 1/Y, PMT, IRR ).
- Difficulty of Questions: the questions are designed by existing GARP members, the selection criteria for a question is the level of difficulty . So the questions will be very very difficult, also the time to answer every question is only 2.15 minutes.
- Prepare Summary Notes for revision: and practice questions on every topic as you complete the topics.
posted @ 10:13 AM,
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Pattern of FRM Exam
FRM Full Exam is a 5-hour (2 test of 2.5 hours each), 140 multiple choice question examination. The exam is split into two sections of 2.5 hrs each (morning and afternoon session). You have approximately 2.15 minutes per Question. Questions are clubbed together for all categories, i.e.
- Foundations of Risk Management (10%),
- Quantitative Analysis (10%),
- Financial Markets & Products (15%),
- Valuation and Risk Models (15%),
- Market Risk Management and Measurement (10%),
- Credit Risk (10%), Operational Risk (10%),
- Investment Management (10%)
- and current issues in Risk Management (10%)
FRM level I Exam is a 4-hour (2 test of 2 hours each), 100 multiple choice question examination, the exam is split into two sections of 2 hrs each (morning and afternoon session). The Level I syllabus is a subset of Complete FRM® syllabus and covers all tools required for Risk Management. Questions are clubbed together for all categories, i.e.
- Foundations of Risk Management (20%),
- Quantitative Analysis (20%),
- Financial Markets & Products (30%),
- Valuation and Risk Models (30%).
The exam is a percentile-based exam and top 40 to 45 percentile students pass the exam, based on the weighted average marks for all subjects hence its necessary to pass in all the subjects. There is no negative marking.
posted @ 10:07 AM,
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