Monthly Roundup for September 2021

We know your time is valuable, so here’s a quick summary of the CII-related articles we’ve posted this month.

This Monthly Roundup allows you to see, at a glance, what articles have been posted and you can simply click on any that are of interest to you.

Discussions about exams and qualifications usually revolve around Level 4 (Diploma) or Level 6 and becoming Chartered or Certified. However, many businesses have a need to train staff who have little or no knowledge of financial services, and who do not need to jump in at the deep end with Level 4 exams. Here at Brand Financial Training we are often contacted by businesses who are not sure where to start with regards helping their support and administration staff learn what is necessary to understand and perform their role well. The difficulty is knowing what path to put them on, and what qualification should be aimed for. In this article, we will specifically look at the options offered by the CII.

Examiners over the years have loved the ‘compare and contrast’ type questions and students sitting the investment-based exams will sooner or later come across the thorny question of active versus passive investment management.

Here, we are looking at the J07 exam – Supervision in a regulated environment – that was sat in the last exam sitting, June 2021.

While many of us like nothing better than to listen to a selection of our favourite artists while poring over revision material, others maintain that ‘hear-a-pin-drop’ silence is the only tolerable learning environment for them.

If you are studying for CII R02, J10 or AF4 exams then you need to get to grips with some statistical concepts. Our aim in this article is to set out in hopefully simple fashion how the use of statistics can help us to understand the level of risk inherent in an investment and how that relates to investment return.

Recently, we helped you to understand and answer R06 ‘factors’ questions that focus on risk or specific product areas. Here, we are focusing on the questions that can be asked relating to client reviews.

After many years of writing case study analyses in preparation for the R06 exam and discussing with our customers afterwards how they felt they did, we know that most candidates struggle with exam technique. This is the overwhelming feedback we get from those who found the exam difficult and even those who thought they did well but didn’t get the pass they were hoping for.

The question paper from the July sitting of R06 has been released by the CII, prompting us to see how we did in predicting the questions and model answers in our pre-exam analysis.

This is a bit of Friday Fun where each week, we ask questions relating to one of these topics: Investments, Taxation, Pensions, Protection, or Regulation. The challenge is for you to answer them in 5 minutes. We post them on the blog every Friday.

To try your hand at answering the questions, visit our blog at one (or all) of the links below:

Friday 24 September

Friday 17 September

Friday 10 September

Friday 3 September