At this link is the first version of an Excel VBA program to model the membership of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (or any similar professional body).  It may be freely used by others under the Creative Commons License.

(NB: the link is to a zip file containing an Excel xlsm file.  Because that contains VBA code, it may be blocked by Microsoft Windows.  If so, to unblock it, see https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/a-potentially-dangerous-macro-has-been-blocked-0952faa0-37e7-4316-b61d-5b5ed6024216).

I have produced this in an attempt to help actuaries and others try and find out some key information which the IFoA has not to date been very transparent about:

-the student drop out rate (i.e. what percentage of students never complete the exams)

-what percentages of students qualify in what time (if they qualify)

- what the Fellow drop out rate is (i.e. what percentage of qualified actuaries leave the IFoA before retirement).

The model has a ReadMe page with instructions:

Screenshot of the inputs (and the button to run the VBA program):

Screenshot of the ModelOutput worksheet (which contains the initial population of students and fellows projected forward 100 years (which should be long enough to reach a steady state unless a long initial period of growth has been selected):

Screenshot of the PivotChart worksheet which is linked to the ModelOutput (its data source needs to be refreshed after a run).  You can change the fields and filters you want to look at here.

I invite fellow IFoA members to play around with the model.  It seems very difficult to put in decrement rates that fit with the IFoA's past assertion that the average qualification time is 7 years (or 5 years has also been mentioned) and also with the published membership student and Fellow population profiles that appear from time to time on the IFoA's website.

The best thing would be for the IFoA to publish detailed statistics on student qualification times, student and fellow drop out rates of course.