Earning your CPCU® designation can help you advance your insurance career, but you must first complete a number of courses that can be quite challenging. In this post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about the CPCU 550 course and give you tips on how to pass this exam.
What’s in this post
- About CPCU 550
- What is the CPCU program?
- What is CPCU 550?
- How difficult is CPCU 550
- About the CPCU 550 exam
- Topics covered in CPCU 550
- Topics you are most likely to see on the CPCU 550 exam
- Tips for passing CPCU 550 exam
- Enroll in our CPCU 550 online study program
What is the CPCU program?
The Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU®) is a professional designation offered by an organization called The Institutes. After completing the program, you will have a solid understanding of how insurance industry works and can display the CPCU designation on your business cards, resume, etc.
Having this designation shows that you have done extra education, which can make you a stronger candidate for hire or promotion. Also, this might give customers, colleagues, and business partners more confidence in working with you because they know you have this foundational knowledge.
What is CPCU 550?
CPCU 550 is one of the core courses that you are required to complete the exam for if you are following the traditional path to earn your CPCU designation. You are not required to pass this exam if you are doing the ARM to CPCU path.
This particular course is about how insurers use data to improve their operations and add more value for their customers. The knowledge you gain will help you understand different types of data analysis techniques, data modeling techniques, and other issues that relate to the use of data.
How difficult is CPCU 550?
This is definitely the most technical course of all the core CPCU courses, with lots of jargon and terminology. On top of that, unless your work involves building databases or developing data model algorithms, it is unlikely that your insurance-related work experience will give you much useful pre-existing knowledge.
If you are using The Institutes’ online course for CPCU 550, you may find that some sections can be tough to read through and that there aren’t enough examples. Fortunately, we do offer a comprehensive study guide that comes with bonus materials that include simple plain-language explanations of the trickier concepts and plenty of examples to help you better grasp the material.
About the CPCU 550 exam
In order to demonstrate that you have understood the material from this course, you will need to pass an online exam administered by The Institutes.
You must go through The Institutes' website to purchase and formally register for your exam. When registering, you must indicate which test window you plan to take the exam during. The four test windows that are available every year are:
- January 15 to March 15
- April 15 to June 15
- July 15 to September 15
- October 15 to December 15
You may pay for your exam fee at any time, and those who register before the test window opens will usually receive a discount. However, you can only launch the exam and complete it during the test window you chose at the time of purchase. If you need to reschedule your exam, a new fee will apply.
The exam consists of 50 questions that cover all the chapters from the course, with a time limit of 65 minutes. The exam is done online, and you must get a score of 70% or better to pass. You may retake the exam (and pay a new fee) if you do not pass, but please check The Institutes' policies regarding how often and how soon you can retake the exam, as that may change from time to time.
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Topics covered in CPCU 550
- Basics of Data Science
- Different Types of Data
- Data Modeling Techniques
- Predictive Models
- How Insurers Use Data for Key Business Functions
- Using Technology for Risk Management
- Data Quality
- Data Ethics
How IEG can help: Our comprehensive study program covers every chapter from CPCU 550. We use plain language and effective illustrations to help you truly understand the content.
Topics you are most likely to see on the CPCU 550 exam
The following list is based on student feedback regard what topics they felt were most heavily-featured on their exam.
Please remember that this is not a comprehensive list of all the topics that will be tested, and each person’s exam may different. Any of the material covered in the course may potentially appear on your exam, so you should prepare accordingly.
- Descriptive vs. predictive modeling
- How different types of technologies can be used – (i.e., you will be given a situation and asked what type of technology would be most useful for that application)
- Internal vs. external data
- Structured vs. unstructured data
- How different types of analysis techniques are used – (i.e., you will be given a problem that a user is trying to solve and asked what type of analysis would be best for trying to find the answer to that problem)
- How data is used to improve marketing
- Characteristics of different types of probability
- Characteristics of quality data
- Creating fair and transparent data models
How IEG can help: Our comprehensive study guide outlines all of these topics and more.
Tips for passing CPCU 550
1) Take CPCU 550 after taking CPCU 520
CPCU 550 is focuses on explaining how technologies work and the key details about various data concepts. It then explains how an insurer can use the data to improve various aspects of their operations. However, the course does not give much background information on each insurance function that the data or technology is being applied to. For example, the course might say that a model can improve the accuracy of the underwriting department or the special investigations unit (SIU), but if you do not know what underwriters or SIU does, it is harder to fully see and understand the connection.
CPCU 520 is all about explaining what each department within an insurance company does, so having the knowledge from CPCU 520 will provide the context you need to fully get what is being described in CPCU 550.
How IEG can help: We have a online study program for CPCU 520 that provides everything you need to prepare for that exam, so that you can then come into CPCU 550 with lots of relevant background information that will improve your understanding of CPCU 550.
2) Don’t be discouraged if you are struggling with the first few chapters
The first chapters of CPCU 550 will explain the key basics of various data-related concepts. These explanations will feel very technical and can be difficult to understand at first, which is discouraging for many students. However, as you make your way through the later chapters that explain how these data concepts are applied to real situations, most students find that it “clicks” better after they see those examples of how the techniques and technologies actually work. In addition, the repetition of seeing the concepts reexplained briefly in the future chapters also helps students finally absorb the basic concepts that were first introduced in the earlier chapters.
How IEG can help: Our online study program teaches you the most foundational concepts right upfront, so you will already have the basic understanding you need to keep up your momentum.
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3) See our list above of the topics you are likely to see on the exam
This exam in particular tends to have many questions that cover test your understanding of a single topic. For example, in order to test your understanding of internal vs external and structured vs unstructured data, you will probably encounter 3-4 questions that give you an example of data and ask you which categories that data would fall under. By carefully studying the topics from our list above, you will likely be able to get several questions right per topic.
4) Don’t waste too much time on long questions or questions that you are stuck on
Every test question is worth only one point, no matter how simple or complex it is. If you find that you are spending a lot of time on one particular problem, you are better off guessing for now and using the option to flag the question so you can return to it later. You don’t want to spend so much time that you run out of time before you can get to all the other questions that might have been easier for you to score points on.
5) Put an answer for every question
You do not get minus points for getting a question wrong, so don’t leave any questions blank.
6) Look over many examples of each concept in action
A great way to really flesh out your understanding of the very technical concepts in this course is to look for examples of how the concept or technology works in real life. The Institutes’ course only has limited examples, but you can easily find many others by using our study materials or simply searching online. We recommend using the search format “data analytics _ examples” where “_” is the topic or concept you want more information on.
How IEG can help: We’ve done all the research for you and packed our comprehensive study guide with tons of examples!
7) Aim to understand The Institutes’ practice questions and not just memorize them
If you are using The Institutes’ study materials, going through their practice questions is an absolute must. However, the questions on the actual exam are not made up of the practice questions, so you cannot just rely on memorizing the answers from the practice quizzes and simulated exam. Read each explanation and re-review the material until you understand why you got a question wrong.
8) Don’t rely solely on The Institutes’ study materials
The Institutes’ way of explaining things is not necessarily the best way, so take advantage of other resources available to you. Some students don’t use The Institutes’ study materials at all and prefer to go with another study option, such as our study materials. We use plain English to explain all of the concepts, include helpful illustrations that help you see how a concept works, and show you how different elements of something relate to one another.
You can also turn to Google and YouTube to look for explanations and examples from other sources too.
9) Join the CPCU Candidates Facebook group
One of the best things you can do during your CPCU journey is to join the CPCU Candidates Facebook group, which is a wonderful community of current and former CPCU students. Here, you can get help with test questions that might be stumping you, ask for advice on propelling your insurance career, and find a healthy dose of moral support and motivation.
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Why our study programs work
Lots of companies offer study materials too, but here is why our study programs stand out:
See the concepts in action
You will be tested on your ability to apply the concepts to different situations, so we provide plenty of examples to show you how things work.
Less is NOT always more
Some things won't make sense until you have enough background info. We give extra context where you'd need it to fully grasp the material.
Learn AND remember
Besides learning the content, you have to remember it all. Our paid study programs include our famous study guides that make it super easy to refresh your memory.
About your instructor
Insurance Exam Guides (IEG) was founded by Stacy Trinh, CPCU®, who first started her teaching journey at the request of her co-workers who were preparing for their CPCU exams. Because of her reputation as an adept trainer and motivator, Stacy's co-workers had asked her to lead a class. The feedback on her sessions and study materials was overwhelming positive, and her students encouraged her to share what she had to offer with the rest of the CPCU community.
Since then, Stacy created a library of study materials for both CPCU® and AINS® that have helped thousands of students pass their exams. As an accounting major and former claims adjuster, her style of instruction incorporates both a financial and operational perspective that makes her study materials well-rounded. She looks forward to helping many more students continue to succeed, including you!
Disclaimers: The Institutes, CPCU®, and AINS® are trademarks of the American Institute For Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, d/b/a The Institutes. InsuranceExamGuides.com is not affiliated or associated with The Institutes in any way, and The Institutes do not endorse, approve, support, or otherwise recognize InsuranceExamGuides.com or its products or services. CPCU® and AINS® are registered trademarks of The Institutes. All rights reserved.