Mr J Jupp, Counsel For the v Respondent — 2018

The claimant, Mr R Davda, alleged indirect race discrimination under section 19 of the Equality Act 2010 arising from the respondent's Curriculum 2019 change. The curriculum replaced the former CT1 and CT5 arrangement with a new CM1 exam, and students who had passed or been exempted from both CT1 and CT5 did not need to take CM1. Mr Davda had a CT1 exemption but had not passed CT5 within the transition period.

The claimant's case was that South African students were advantaged because the Actuarial Society of South Africa continued to run CT1 and CT5 equivalents separately, and the respondent had previously recognised equivalent passes or fellowships through individual examination exemptions and a mutual recognition arrangement. The tribunal accepted that the respondent had suspended IEEs and MRAs with other associations, including ASSA, from 1 January 2019 while a mapping exercise was undertaken, and found that the mapping had not been completed by the hearing. It therefore did not accept that South African nationals had a current advantage for the purpose of the claim.

The tribunal rejected the respondent's preliminary objections based on res judicata and Henderson v Henderson, finding that the present claim did not duplicate the earlier proceedings and that Mr Davda did not know of the ASSA system when he brought the previous case. On the substance, it held that the PCP applied to all student members but that the claimant had not proved British student members were put at a particular disadvantage compared with non-British student members. It noted the absence of nationality statistics for the affected pool and said the evidence was insufficient to infer the required disadvantage. For those reasons the indirect race discrimination claim failed, and the tribunal also did not make the requested section 145 declaration.