The CAS is reviewing what it tests on preliminary exams. That sentence alone should get the attention of every candidate sitting for MAS-I or MAS-II, every hiring manager building an entry-level pipeline, and every study provider designing materials. The review, driven by findings from the CAS Actuarial Professional Analysis, is part of a broader effort to ensure the credentialing pathway remains, in the CAS's own words, "accessible, competitive, and attractive to new candidates."
From tracking CAS and SOA syllabus revisions through multiple cycles, the pattern is consistent: content changes lag practice shifts by three to five years. The current review is a response to the data science and AI transformation that began reshaping actuarial work around 2020, and it follows the completion of the Admissions Transformation Plan (ATP), which overhauled fellowship-level exams between 2022 and 2026. The preliminary exams are next.
This article breaks down what the Professional Analysis found, what changes are likely, what historical precedent tells us about transition timelines and pass rate impacts, and how the CAS review compares to the SOA's parallel credential evolution.
What the Actuarial Professional Analysis Found
The Actuarial Professional Analysis is the CAS's practice-focused successor to the Job Task Analysis (JTA) conducted in 2020 with credentialed members across ratemaking, reserving, and nontraditional roles. The CAS's stated principle is straightforward: "JTA results are the guide for what is tested; if it's not used in practice now or in the future, it doesn't make it into the exam."
The 2020 JTA produced specific, measurable findings that drove the ATP changes already implemented at the fellowship level. Several of those findings have direct implications for what preliminary exams should cover going forward.
The most significant finding was a widening gap between statistical learning topics tested on preliminary exams and the methods used in daily P&C actuarial practice. When the JTA was conducted, practicing actuaries reported heavy reliance on generalized linear models, regularized regression, decision trees, random forests, and gradient boosting for pricing, reserving, and underwriting work. The preliminary exam syllabus at the time underweighted these topics relative to their practical importance.
This gap has already been partially addressed. The domain weight shifts implemented for MAS-I and MAS-II in Fall 2023 were a direct response:
| MAS-I Domain | Pre-2023 Weight | Current Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Probability Models | 20-35% | 20-30% |
| Statistics | 15-30% | 20-30% |
| Extended Linear Models | 30-50% | 45-55% |
| Time Series | 10-20% | Removed (moved to MAS-II) |
| MAS-II Domain | Pre-2023 Weight | Current Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Statistical Learning | 10-20% | 40-50% |
| Credibility | 5-15% | 15-25% |
| Bayesian Analysis/MCMC | 10-20% | Removed |
| Time Series | Not included | 10-20% |
The removal of Bayesian Analysis and MCMC from MAS-II is instructive. The JTA found these topics were "not a standalone domain required for CAS credentials" in current P&C practice. That is a precise, defensible finding: Bayesian methods matter in some actuarial applications, but the JTA data showed they were not broadly enough used across P&C roles to justify their weight on a required exam. Meanwhile, Statistical Learning jumped from a minor component to nearly half the exam, reflecting the reality that most entry-level pricing and reserving work now involves some form of machine learning model.
The current Actuarial Professional Analysis extends this same methodology forward, asking a core question that the 2020 JTA partially answered but did not fully resolve: are the preliminary exams testing the right topics at the right depth for someone entering P&C practice in 2027 and beyond?
What Changes Are Likely
Based on the trajectory of the ATP, the Professional Analysis findings, and patterns from CAS working group publications over the past two years, several categories of change appear probable.
Likely Additions: Data Science and AI Competencies
The strongest signal for what comes next is the PCPA (Property and Casualty Predictive Analytics) requirement, which became mandatory for new ACAS candidates on January 1, 2026. The PCPA is a two-part assessment: a 40-question, 2-hour multiple-choice exam covering data exploration, GLM construction, decision trees, and model validation, plus a two-week hands-on project (~20 hours) using historical P&C datasets.
The PCPA's content outline, dated May 2024, covers supervised learning methods including GLMs, decision trees, random forests, and gradient boosting. It explicitly tests practical skills: data cleaning, feature engineering, model selection, validation, and communication of results to non-technical stakeholders. These are the competencies that practicing actuaries identified as most critical in the JTA.
What the PCPA does not cover is also revealing. The content outline does not mention large language models, generative AI, causal inference, or cloud-scale computing. Its machine learning scope is limited to classical supervised learning. Given how rapidly AI is reshaping actuarial work, the preliminary exam review is likely to consider whether foundational AI literacy, such as understanding model architectures, prompt engineering principles, and AI governance frameworks, should appear somewhere in the credentialing pathway.
The CAS has already signaled interest in this direction. The CAS AI Working Group published its AI Primer in March 2026, and the CAS has an active Request for Proposals on Adapting Large Language Models for Specialized P&C Actuarial Reasoning, offering up to $40,000 in research funding. Neither document directly addresses exam content, but they indicate institutional attention to the gap between what candidates learn and what practitioners need.
The most likely near-term addition is not generative AI itself, but the statistical foundations that underpin it. Topics such as regularization methods (Lasso, Ridge, Elastic Net), ensemble methods, cross-validation frameworks, and model interpretability techniques are already tested on MAS-II. The review could push these concepts earlier in the pathway, or expand their coverage to include more applied scenarios.
Likely De-emphasis or Removal
The CAS has demonstrated willingness to remove topics when practice data supports it. The 2023 removal of Bayesian Analysis/MCMC from MAS-II and the earlier elimination of Exam 3F (Financial Economics) from the CAS pathway show that the organization will cut material when the JTA evidence points away from it.
Exam 3F's removal is the more instructive precedent. Financial economics was a joint SOA/CAS requirement for decades. When the SOA announced it would discontinue Exam MFE after Spring 2018, the CAS used the disruption to reassess whether the topic belonged in the P&C pathway at all. The answer was no: the JTA showed insufficient connection between financial economics content and day-to-day P&C actuarial work. The CAS replaced the requirement with an online Data Concepts course administered by The Institutes (iCAS DS1), covering data visualization, data quality, and structured versus unstructured data.
That replacement pattern, swapping traditional mathematical content for applied data skills, is likely to repeat. Candidates currently studying for preliminary exams should watch for announcements about topics where the Professional Analysis finds a gap between exam coverage and practical relevance. Probability theory and mathematical statistics will almost certainly remain (they underpin everything else), but their relative weight could shift further toward applied modeling.
Possible Structural Changes
Beyond individual topics, the review could address the structure of the preliminary exam sequence itself. The current path requires Exam 1/P (Probability, joint with SOA), Exam 2/FM (Financial Mathematics, joint with SOA), MAS-I (Modern Actuarial Statistics I), and MAS-II (Modern Actuarial Statistics II). The first two exams are jointly administered with the SOA and have not changed substantially in years.
A structural question the CAS will likely confront: should the preliminary pathway diverge further from the SOA's, reflecting the increasing specialization of P&C versus life/health actuarial work? The SOA has already moved in the direction of greater specialization, launching Exam SRM (Statistics for Risk Modeling) and Exam PA (Predictive Analytics) as distinct ASA requirements. The CAS counterpart is the MAS-I/MAS-II/PCPA sequence, which is already more data-science-oriented than the joint preliminary exams.
If the Professional Analysis finds that financial mathematics (Exam 2/FM) content has limited application in entry-level P&C roles, compared to, say, simulation methods or data engineering concepts, the CAS would face a consequential decision about whether to maintain joint exam alignment with the SOA or chart its own course for the first two preliminary exams.
Historical Precedent: How Past Overhauls Played Out
The CAS has undertaken three significant exam restructurings in the past fifteen years. Each provides a template for what candidates and employers should expect.
The 2011 Restructuring
The 2011 revision reorganized associateship and fellowship topics so that "related and complementary topics are tested in the same exam." Exam 7 was introduced at this time, consolidating estimation of unpaid claims material. Transition periods ran through May 2011 and May 2012, giving candidates roughly 18 months to adjust. Pass rates on the restructured exams were initially volatile; first sittings of new-format exams typically showed lower pass rates as candidates and study providers adapted to the changed material.
The 2017-2018 MAS Creation
This was the most consequential overhaul in recent CAS history. Announced in January 2017, the creation of MAS-I and MAS-II was triggered partly by the SOA's announcement that it would discontinue Exam C after Spring 2018, removing the waiver pathway CAS candidates had relied upon for Exam 4 credit. The CAS conducted a comprehensive stakeholder review and found "strong consensus that we need to test more statistics and predictive analytics material."
MAS-I replaced Exam S with enhanced GLM emphasis. MAS-II replaced Exam 4/C, adding Statistical Learning, Linear Mixed Models, and Bayesian/MCMC (later removed). MAS-I was first offered Spring 2018; MAS-II followed in Fall 2018. The transition compressed into roughly 18 months from announcement to first sitting.
Early MAS pass rates tell a cautionary story for candidates expecting stability. MAS-I pass rates have ranged from 42.3% to 55.3% across recent sittings, with 5,843 passes out of 12,886 total attempts through August 2025 (a 45.3% cumulative rate across all attempts, though the effective unique-candidate rate is higher at roughly 58.6%). MAS-II has shown similar volatility, ranging from 49.9% to 65.0% per sitting, with a lifetime average around 54% and 3,424 passes out of 6,278 attempts through August 2025.
The key pattern: first sittings of restructured exams carry additional uncertainty. Study materials are new, instructors are calibrating their approach, and the CAS itself is calibrating question difficulty. Candidates who sat for the first MAS-I offering in Spring 2018 were effectively beta testers.
The 2023-2024 ATP Fellowship Overhaul
The most recent round of changes touched all upper-level exams. Exam 7 became 100% focused on advanced reserving; insurance company valuation was dropped entirely. Exam 8 was restructured so that classification ratemaking comprises at least 60% of the exam. Exam 9 was renamed "Catastrophe Risk and Capital Management" and rebuilt around a new textbook, Pricing Insurance Risk: Theory and Practice by Mildenhall and Major. New item types (multiple-select, fill-in-the-blank, point-and-click) were introduced across fellowship exams.
The ATP fellowship changes rolled out over four sittings from October 2023 through Fall 2024. Transition credits were mapped one-to-one where possible. The CAS gave approximately 12 months of advance notice before each exam's new content outline took effect.
What the Pattern Tells Us
Across all three restructurings, the CAS has followed a consistent timeline: 12 to 18 months from formal announcement to first administration of changed exams. Transition rules have been generous, allowing candidates who started under old requirements to finish under old rules for at least two to three additional sittings. Study providers (ACTEX, ASM, Coaching Actuaries, The Infinite Actuary) typically need six to nine months after a content outline is published to produce updated materials.
For the preliminary exam review, this means that any changes announced in late 2026 or early 2027 would likely take effect no earlier than Fall 2027 or Spring 2028. Candidates currently studying for MAS-I and MAS-II under the current syllabus have time, but not unlimited time.
CAS 2026 Exam Schedule: The Access Expansion Context
The preliminary exam review does not exist in isolation. It is happening alongside the most aggressive expansion of exam access in CAS history. CAS President Frank Chang framed the motivation directly: "We have heard from our candidates for many years that they want the opportunity to sit for CAS exams more frequently, as they strive to balance the achievement of their career goals with their personal lives."
The 2026 exam schedule includes:
| Exam | 2024 Frequency | 2026 Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| MAS-I | 2x/year | 4x/year |
| MAS-II | 2x/year | 4x/year |
| Exams 5, 6C, 6U, 7 | 2x/year | 2x/year |
| Exams 8 and 9 | 1x/year | 2x/year |
| Exam 6I | 1x/year | 1x/year (exploring expansion) |
| PCPA Exam | Continuous | Continuous |
| PCPA Project | Quarterly | Quarterly |
All exams are computer-based through Pearson VUE centers. French-language versions are now available for all CAS exams, serving Quebec-based candidates. The combined effect of more frequent sittings and computer-based testing is a significant reduction in the calendar time required to progress through the preliminary pathway.
The access expansion and the content review are linked strategically. Making exams more accessible is a necessary condition for attracting candidates, but it is not sufficient if the content itself does not reflect the skills that employers value and that new actuaries will actually use. The CAS appears to be pursuing both tracks simultaneously: remove logistical barriers (frequency, format) while ensuring the substance remains relevant.
How the CAS Compares to the SOA's Credential Evolution
The CAS is not the only actuarial organization rethinking its credentialing pathway. The SOA has been on a parallel track, and the comparison reveals both convergence and divergence in how the two bodies are responding to the same industry forces.
SOA ASA Pathway Changes
The SOA streamlined the ASA pathway effective January 31, 2025. The Fundamentals of Actuarial Practice (FAP) module sequence was condensed from eight modules to five plus a Final Assessment. New e-learning modules ("Pre-Actuarial Foundations" and "Actuarial Science Foundations") replaced the older modular structure. Exam FAM (Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics) consolidated prior exam content.
Two SOA requirements are directly comparable to CAS developments. Exam SRM (Statistics for Risk Modeling) is a 3.5-hour, 35-question exam covering machine learning methods. Exam PA (Predictive Analytics) is a 5.25-hour computer-based exam using R and RMarkdown that tests practical modeling skills. The PA exam is conceptually identical to the CAS PCPA: both test whether candidates can build, validate, and communicate the results of predictive models using real data.
The SOA has gone one step further with the Advanced Topics in Predictive Analytics (ATPA), available as an alternative to Exam IFM, which pushes data science deeper into the ASA pathway. The CAS does not yet have a direct equivalent, though the preliminary exam review could change that.
SOA FSA Flexible Pathway
At the fellowship level, the SOA launched its flexible pathway in Fall 2025, replacing the previous six-track system with a modular approach: four technical courses including a two-course sequence in one practice area, plus two additional courses from any area including a new Cross Practice category. Twenty-three total courses span seven practice areas. Grading time was cut from 11 weeks to four weeks, and high-demand courses are offered three times per year.
The SOA's move toward modularity and flexibility contrasts with the CAS's approach of deepening existing exam content rather than restructuring the pathway format. The CAS has focused on making its exams more relevant (ATP content changes) and more accessible (frequency increases), while the SOA has focused on making its pathway more customizable. These are different responses to the same underlying pressure: both organizations face a talent pipeline that is losing candidates to data science, fintech, and technology careers that do not require passing a decade-long exam sequence.
The Convergence on Data Science
Where CAS and SOA clearly converge is on the importance of data science and predictive analytics. Both organizations now require hands-on predictive modeling assessments (PCPA for CAS, Exam PA for SOA). Both have upweighted statistical learning and machine learning topics in their exam syllabi. And both are conducting practice analyses that will likely push AI-related competencies further into the credentialing pathway.
The SOA's 2026 Job Analysis Survey is expected to produce findings similar to what the CAS Professional Analysis has already shown: that working actuaries need data science skills that the current exam pathway does not fully address. The question for both organizations is how quickly they can close the gap without destabilizing the candidate experience.
How Hiring Managers Should Prepare
The preliminary exam review creates a practical challenge for employers: a transitional cohort of candidates with mixed exam backgrounds. Some will have passed exams under the current syllabus; others will have passed under a revised version. The gap between those two groups may be wider than in previous transitions, particularly if AI and data science competencies are added.
Three specific preparations are worth making now.
First, decouple exam progress from technical skills assessment in your hiring process. If the CAS adds data science topics to preliminary exams, candidates who passed under the old syllabus will not have been tested on them. This does not mean they lack the skills, but it means you cannot rely on exam completion as a proxy for data literacy. Consider adding a practical assessment, even a brief take-home modeling exercise, to evaluate skills that the current exams may not cover.
Second, update your study support policies. If exam content changes, your candidates will need updated study materials and potentially different study time allocations. First sittings of restructured exams historically show lower pass rates, which means your candidates may need more attempts. Budget for an additional exam sitting per candidate during the first two years after a content change takes effect.
Third, track the announcement timeline. The CAS typically provides 12 to 18 months of advance notice before content changes take effect. When a formal announcement comes, you will have roughly one year to adjust your hiring criteria, onboarding programs, and study support. The time to plan, however, is now. Companies that wait for the formal announcement will be reacting rather than preparing.
What Candidates Should Do Now
If you are currently studying for MAS-I or MAS-II, the most important thing to understand is that the current syllabus is your syllabus until a formal announcement says otherwise. Do not slow your pace or skip exams in anticipation of changes that have not been announced. Every historical CAS restructuring has included transition rules that protect candidates who started under the old requirements.
That said, three actions will position you well regardless of what changes come.
Build practical data science skills alongside your exam preparation. The CAS is clearly moving in the direction of applied analytics. Learning Python, R, or SQL; building predictive models with real datasets; and understanding model validation techniques will serve you whether or not these topics appear on a revised exam. The PCPA requirement already demands these skills at the ACAS level. Earlier exposure will only help.
Pay attention to the PCPA. If you have not yet looked at the PCPA requirements, now is the time. The $700 project fee per attempt and the two-week time commitment make this a significant assessment. The PCPA's content outline is also the best available signal for what the CAS considers essential applied skills. It is, in effect, a preview of the direction the preliminary exams may move.
Stay current with CAS announcements. The CAS typically publishes exam content changes through the CAS Admissions page, the Actuarial Review magazine, and CAS Student Central. Subscribe to these channels so you are not caught off guard by a timeline that moves faster than expected.
CAS Membership Context
The exam review is happening against a backdrop of steady CAS membership growth. As of 2025, the CAS has 11,509 total members (approximately 4,143 Associates and 7,366 Fellows), up from 10,840 in 2024. The CAS passed the 10,000-member milestone in 2023. Spring 2024 produced over 600 new ACAS and FCAS credentials, and Fall 2024 added 412 new Associates and 79 new Fellows.
By May 2023, the CAS had delivered over 23,000 computer-based exams across six sittings since the CBT launch. The infrastructure to administer more frequent, potentially restructured exams is already in place.
These numbers matter for the exam review because they show the CAS is not making changes out of desperation. Membership is growing. The pathway is producing new credentials at a steady rate. The review is a proactive effort to maintain relevance, not a reactive response to declining enrollment. That distinction matters for how aggressively the CAS may move: proactive reviews tend to produce thoughtful, well-sequenced changes rather than rushed overhauls.
Why This Matters for the Profession
The CAS preliminary exam review is not just an administrative exercise. It is a statement about what it means to be a P&C actuary in 2027 and beyond. The exams define the minimum knowledge base for entry into the profession. If that knowledge base shifts to include data science, AI literacy, and applied analytics, it changes the hiring profile, the career trajectory, and the competitive positioning of CAS-credentialed actuaries relative to data scientists, engineers, and other quantitative professionals.
From a broader industry perspective, the timing aligns with regulatory developments that are pushing actuaries to demonstrate competency in exactly these areas. The NAIC Model Bulletin on AI use by insurers, adopted by roughly 24 states, requires documented AI governance programs. ASOP No. 56 applies to any actuary using models, including AI models. Colorado's AI Act requires quantitative testing of algorithmic systems used in insurance decisions. Actuaries who enter the profession without foundational AI and data science competencies will face a steeper learning curve to meet these requirements.
The CAS has a narrow window. If the preliminary exam review produces meaningful content changes by 2028, the organization will have realigned its credentialing pathway with practice reality within a single JTA cycle, roughly eight years from the 2020 analysis to implementation. That is faster than the historical average for professional credentialing bodies, and it would position the CAS credential as one of the more data-science-literate professional designations in the financial services industry.
If the review stalls or produces only incremental tweaks, the gap between exam content and practice will continue to widen. Employers will increasingly rely on supplemental assessments, bootcamps, and on-the-job training to fill the skills that the exams do not address. The CAS credential will remain valuable, but it will become a less complete signal of professional readiness.
The Professional Analysis data is in. The infrastructure for more frequent exam delivery is built. The fellowship exams have already been overhauled. The preliminary exams are the last piece, and everything about the CAS's recent trajectory suggests the changes are coming.