History of Rising Fellow

In October 2022, Casual Fellow and the original Rising Fellow merged businesses to create the Rising Fellow you see today in order to better help CAS actuaries pass their upper-level actuarial exams and get their FCAS.

The Beginning

In 2012, after finishing his exams in 2010, Michael McPhail suddenly had a lot more free time. He believed he could create more effective study materials than what was currently available, so Michael started Casual Fellow (CF) and created a better study guide and seminar to offer for CAS Exam 7.

The Competitor 

Steve Roll started the original Rising Fellow (RF) in 2015, a few years after getting his FCAS. 

While studying for each of the Fellowship-level exams, he built out a notebook of detailed, step-by-step recipes for how to solve different calculation problem-types. This helped him pass those exams on first sitting by studying more effectively and not wasting time on the exam figuring out how to solve calculation problems. 

He created the Exam 7-9 Cookbooks based on those notebooks so that other actuaries could take advantage of this study tool without having to create it themselves.

Michael and Steve realized that the Exam 7 Cookbook complimented the traditional study guide and seminar format offered by Casual Fellow, so they began to collaborate to combine their study materials.

Rising Fellow & Casual Fellow Together

Over the next few years, Casual Fellow and Rising Fellow offered bundled products, eventually culminating in the hugely popular CF/RF Exam 7 Joint Online Seminar and later a similar online course for Exam 9. 

After successfully working together for several years, Michael and Steve realized that working together as a single company would provide the best experience to students going through the exam journey. In October 2022, Casual Fellow and Rising Fellow merged to become the Rising Fellow you see today.

The Rising Fellow team is thrilled to continue providing online courses and study materials to help CAS actuaries pass their exams!

Geoff Werner joining Rising Fellow for Spring 2024 Exam 5 Online Course »