Newsletter for November 2017

If you have made a purchase from us in recent months, you may receive an email from Feefo asking for some feedback.

Feefo independently collects reviews from customers for thousands of companies in the UK. Other similar sites you may have heard of include TrustPilot. If and when you receive an email from Feefo, I would really appreciate it if you would give us a rating on our service and products. This helps us to understand where we are doing well, and very importantly where we can do better. Of course, you can always email us directly with your input too!

For those of you who follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, you may be aware that we share useful technical and exam-related articles from other sources that we believe may be of use to you. Many of those shares come from Professional Paraplanner.

Whilst this is a publication for paraplanners, they do have some fantastic articles of use to anybody studying for exams. The great news is that we will shortly be contributing to Professional Paraplanner magazine and on their website. We’ll be providing useful articles with regards qualifications and studying as well as some Q&A similar to our Friday Five. Do keep an eye out for us!

Also, don’t forget you can also find our articles every few months in Money Marketing.

Finally, as I get out and about a bit more (I need some Vitamin D!), I will also be speaking at LifeTalk LIVE in London on 25th January. This is a new TED-style event for IFAs and Financial Services professionals containing short “talks, ideas, notions, predictions, insights and wisdom”! It would be great to see you there – do say hello! Jump to https://adviserlifetalk.com/register for more information.

Enjoy the last few weeks before Christmas! (Yes – I couldn’t get by without mentioning it).

Best Wishes,

Catriona and the Team
Brand Financial Training

We heard that tax pools were part of the most recent AF1 paper, which might have been a surprise for some. We wondered quite how many students would have known enough to answer the question or indeed how much anyone knew about them! This article is helpful to those studying for their CII AF1, AF5, J02 and R03 exams.

Discretionary Trusts

The first thing to say is that tax pools apply to trustees of discretionary trusts. Discretionary trusts are where trustees use their discretion to make income and capital payments; they can decide what gets paid out and to whom. No beneficiary has a right to anything.

How much tax?

Trustees have to pay tax on income they receive. They have a standard rate band of £1,000, which means that dividend income up to £1,000 is taxed at 7.5%, and if it was any other type of income, it would be taxed at 20%. (Remember also that trustees don’t get a dividend allowance). Above the £1,000, dividends are taxed at 38.1%, and all other income is taxed at 45%. The standard rate band has be divided by the number of trusts the settlor has set up, but there is a standard rate band for each trust of £200 if they have set up more than five.

As you will know, when trustees use their discretion to make an income payment, it has to be made with a tax credit of 45%. The beneficiary then either claims back some of the tax paid or all of it if they are a non-taxpayer (or none of it if they are an additional rate taxpayer).

This tax credit (basically income tax that is treated as having been deducted) needs to have been covered by tax already paid by the trustees. After all, HMRC needs to make sure that any tax reclaim being made by a beneficiary is not more than the amount of tax originally paid by the trustees.

Do you know what sort of a learner you are? Do you understand how you already process, store and retrieve information in your day-to-day life? This article discusses the profiles of different types of learners.

Continuing from last month’s article…

The more you understand about how your brain already prefers to process information, the more you can tailor your revision to suit. This will mean that you can learn more easily, and that, in turn means an easier life and faster route to qualifications.

If you remember, each pair forms a continuum. You’ll slide up and down depending on circumstances, but will probably find you tend towards one end or the other.

Remembering that each pair is a continuum, and circumstances have you tending towards one end or the other, do you recognise yourself in any of these descriptions?

And so what?

Well, maybe knowing a little bit about your personality will help you make decisions about how to revise so that you make it easier and more effective.

Thinker – Feeler – How you evaluate information

This is about how you reach conclusions and how you make decisions, either through logic or by using fairness and human values.

Thinkers analyse problems impartially and weigh up the impact of their decisions quite objectively and based on logic and beliefs. They have strong principles and need a sense of purpose. They value fairness, focusing on the logic and objective criteria of each specific situation. They naturally see flaws and tend to be critical. They tend to be frank and honest rather than diplomatic, and accept conflict as normal when dealing with people.

Thinkers prefer to work with factual, abstract material, rather than diving straight into real life examples. They like clearly defined goals and objectives, precision, and taking action, and they want to know up front exactly what it is they have to do to learn the material. They do well to think about their own objectives for learning a specific chunk of information and ultimately, for passing the exam. They need to concentrate on what they’re going to do to pass the exam, rather than what other people can do to help. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t go on training days or ask for help. It just means they should focus on their motivation and their own ability to make things happen.

Feelers, on the other hand, get to their conclusions by exploring their personal feelings and the impact of these decisions on other people. They’re sensitive to the needs and values of others and their decisions and actions are directed by that. They are the sort of people who value harmony and will seek consensus in a group because they dislike conflict and feel uncomfortable with tension. They’re often good at persuasion and facilitating differences within a group.

Feelers like to relate what they’re learning to their own personal experiences. They often prefer working in small groups and usually learn very well by helping others to learn too, especially in a friendly, supportive environment. They would do well to set questions for themselves, applying the material they need to learn to real-life situations, then answering those questions with the information they’re learning. Explaining their answers to someone else is another useful approach. Another is to set a question for a group discussion, allowing each member, in turn, to share information and ideas, before coming to a consensus on a solution.

Passing AF7 isn’t only about having the necessary knowledge and understanding, it’s about being able to apply that knowledge in an exam setting exactly as needed and in a timely manner. Brand Financial Training offers various resources to help you achieve exam success, and we are pleased to let you know that we now offer audio masterclasses to support your AF7 exam revision.

Learn by listening with our MP3 masterclasses. They allow you to absorb and understand the material in digestible chunks. You can listen at home, in the car, at the gym or wherever you may be.

To purchase our brand new audio masterclasses, click here.

Or you can try before you buy. Click here to get your free audio masterclass taster.

..."The calculation workbooks for R02 and R03 are very good indeed. They were a major factor in helping me achieve good scores in these exams (89% and 80% respectively)..."

Julian Sellen, Leatherhead

Available for AF1, AF3, AF4, R02, R03, R04, R06, J03, J05, J10, J12, CF1, CF6

Many exam-takers lose vital marks when it comes to performing calculations as they haven’t nailed down the exact process and order in which to perform the calculations, and haven’t spent enough time practising them.

The number of marks gained or lost on calculation questions can make the difference between a pass and a fail. Just a little more time taken on calculations during the revision period can give you the confidence you need to perform any calculation that could come up, so that you know you will gain top marks on all those calculation questions.

Our calculation workbooks guide you through the calculations, step-by-step, and providing detailed answers, with cross references to the relevant CII study text. All questions and answers kept up-to-date to reflect changes to the exam syllabus and tax year, and you can download them instantly in PDF format.

Why not try before you buy? Download one of our free tasters:

AF1, AF3, AF4

R02, R03, R04, R06

J03, J05, J10, J12

CF1, CF6

..."I passed R02 - No doubt thanks to your fantastic workbook which helped no end! With the extra work that I did going through your workbook, this helped a great deal with feeling confident which in this exam particularly was useful given that the technique and timing is as important as the knowledge and skill in ensuring that you get through the questions in a timely manner. One could so easily become distracted or frustrated trying to work out/remember one particular formula to the deficit of the other questions but your workbook enabled me to feel glad that there were so many calculations in the exam whereby before I actually feared them."...

David Gunn, Adviser, Nottingham

Are you aware that the CII update their study texts throughout the examinable year to either incorporate new legislations, correct errors or clarify information? Many candidates aren't aware of this, which can result in candidates studying out-of-date information. To make this easier for you, we have collated the most recent CII study text updates.

6 September – 5 October 2017 : AF7, ER1, R04

2 August – 5 September 2017 : AF1, AF2, AF3, CF1, CF8, ER1, FA2, J03, J05, J12, LP2, R03, R04, R05, R08

5 June – 1 August 2017 : IF2

Articles and Help for All Your Exams

You’ll find that there’s something for everyone when you check out our blog:

• specific topics and how-to articles;
• reviews of recent CII exam papers;
• our Friday Five – a weekly quiz to give you a fun break from reading the study text;
• study techniques that help you to retain your revision and keep your brain working for you, when you need it;
• information on recent updates to the CII study texts.

Here are the blog posts you might have missed since our last newsletter:

Friday Five – 10 November - Click here.

Getting Back to Basics on Property Ownership - Click here.

Friday Five – 3 November - Click here.

The Two Pools Approach to Asset Allocation - Click here.

Friday Five – 27 October - Click here.

Understanding How the Letting Exemption is Applied - Click here.

Friday Five – 20 October - Click here.

Reflections on the First Ever Sitting of the CII’s AF7 Pension Transfers Exam - Click here.

Friday Five – 13 October - Click here.

There’s such a variety of information on offer to help you as you tackle your CII exams, that you won’t want to miss a single post. We’ve made it easy for you; just click the button below and enter your email details. Be ‘in the know’ with CII-exam-related tips and info – straight to your inbox!

..." It always seems impossible until it’s done. "...

"5 Questions in 5 Minutes Every Friday"

This is a bit of Friday Fun where we provide you with 5 questions (and answers) relevant to a mix of CII exams. The challenge is for you to answer the questions in 5 minutes.

Where do I find the Friday Five?

We post each week's Friday Five to our blog first thing every Friday. You can either visit our blog every Friday at https://brandft.co.uk/blog or you can simply go there now, and click on the subscribe button in the top right-hand corner of the blog and sign up to receive notifications of our Friday Five posts.

Note that we don't email the Friday Five out to everybody every Friday, so we recommend you sign up to our blog at https://brandft.co.uk/blog so that you receive an email notification when it is posted. It will only take you a minute to sign up.

A bit of Friday Fun, but with the added benefit of testing your exam knowledge!