Business Finance (CB1) provides the theory and application of corporate finance as well as the main elements of companies’ financial statements. Candidates will gain knowledge of corporate governance, different types of company structure, management goals and maximising shareholder wealth, traditional and new methods of raising short and long-term finance, use of leverage, growth and profitability, and mergers and acquisitions. In financial statements analysis, regulation and regulatory bodies for financial reporting, the company’s balance sheet, income, and cash flow statements, and elements of management accounting are considered.
Business Finance (CB1) core reading is available from the IFoA E-Shop or our tuition provider ActEd (BPP).
CB1 syllabus for 2024 exams (PDF, 170 KB)
CB1 syllabus for 2025 exams (PDF, 140 KB)
Business Finance (CB1) core reading
Exam format: 3 hours and 20 minutes computer-based exam (Word)
Recommended study hours: 150
Business Economics (CB2) introduces the main principles of economics and their application in a business context. In micro economics it covers the operation of single markets, market price and output determination, decisions made by consumers on allocating their budget and by producers on price and output, and different types of market structures and the implication of each for social welfare. In macroeconomics candidates will gain knowledge of the working of the economic system, governments’ macroeconomic objectives, unemployment, inflation, economic growth, international trade and financial systems and financial crises.
Business Economics (CB2) core reading is available from the IFoA E-Shop or our tuition provider ActEd (BPP).
CB2 syllabus for 2024 exams (PDF, 203 KB)
CB2 syllabus for 2025 exams (PDF, 110 KB)
Business Economics (CB2) core reading
Exam format: 3 hours and 20 minutes computer-based exam (Word)
Recommended study hours: 150
The CB3 Business Management subject is designed to help you understand the business environment in which you will be working, your professional responsibilities and how to tackle business-related problems. It is a practically focused programme, which includes some preparatory work ahead of a business simulation game, completion of a workbook, with some short exercises, and finally an online test. Individuals are encouraged to have work experience before entering for CB3.
Exam format
The legal materials prepared by the College of Law deal with areas which are of relevance to actuaries: mergers and acquisitions, data protection and intellectual property. Where possible and relevant the legal materials also provide a comparison with the law in other jurisdictions.
The College of Law materials allows you to work through a workbook for each legal topic and gives you the opportunity to test yourself as you progress. The test yourself questions are designed to get you thinking about the sort of issues which may crop up in the CB3 examination.
There are 52 strategy tutorials – each will take about 5 minutes to complete, with some with additional exercises taking longer.
The business game and required reading will now run in parallel over a 6 week period. The final assessment is an online test which is not timed, but should take less than 2 hours to complete.
Business Management covers the following key areas:
The exam also covers the legal principles that are relevant to actuarial work by building on the themes introduced in the Stage 1 Professionalism Course.
Successful completion of this exam is a requirement of qualification for those who joined the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries on or after 1 July 2004. If you joined on or after 1 March 2012 you will need to have passed the Stage 1 Professionalism Course before you can apply for CB3.
CB3 is an online exam, an online business game, a set of written exercises, and an online multiple choice exam. The business game takes approximately an hour per session, over a six week period, but input is not necessarily required every day over this period.
For information on entry requirements and objectives of the exam, please download:
CB3 review, updates and 2025 exam dates
We regularly review the content and format of our curriculum subjects to make sure they reflect current actuarial best practice and meet the future needs of our profession.
We are currently reviewing the content and format of our Business Management (CB3) subject.
We will share any planned updates to our CB3 assessment content and format resulting from this review in December 2024. We will publish future booking dates for CB3 alongside the announcement of planned updates to the subject in December.
To help you plan your schedule, we are giving advanced notice that we will be pausing our CB3 assessment for a short period after our 3 February to 14 March assessment session. We will pause CB3 assessments until May 2025, to enable us to implement any updates recommended by the review.
If CB3 is the final subject you need to pass to achieve an IFoA qualification and you have not already booked to sit the assessment but would like to, please contact our member services team who will be happy to help you.
Exam format: As above
Recommended study hours: 20