Posted by The Team at Brand Financial Training on October 12, 2021 in Newsletter
12 September 2017
October is usually a really busy time of year for CII written exams but as they began early this autumn, they are now pretty much done and dusted with just one written exam left this year (J07). For those of you who sat your exams over the past few weeks, we hope it went well!
Many of you will still be busy with multiple-choice exams until the end of the year, and as always, we are looking for ways to help you pass your exams first time. For those of you studying towards the multiple choice R01, 2, 3, 4 or 5 exams, do have a read of our complimentary How to Pass guides. The guides walk you through some of the common questions you’ll face in each exam and provide some useful tips on exam technique. You can order your free guide here.
Best Wishes,
The Team at Brand Financial Training
Featured Article
Getting Back to Basics on Property Ownership
In a recent CII written exam, the property owned by a husband and wife was held as tenants in common rather than as joint tenants. The differences between the two could be tested in CF1, R01, R05, R06, J02, AF1 or AF5.
Let’s remind ourselves here of the detail:
Joint Tenants
Under a joint tenancy, if one of the joint owners dies, then their share of the property automatically passes to the surviving joint tenant. This is due to the ‘right of survivorship’.
This is usually how any joint life first death policy would be held so that on the first death of one of them, the sum assured would be paid to the survivor as the other joint tenant.
This is also the normal way for most homes to be held by a couple.
Tenants in Common
Under a tenancy in common arrangement, the situation is different. On the death of a tenant in common, the property does not revert automatically to the survivor. Instead, it passes to the deceased’s estate and is distributed according to their will, if they have one, or the laws of intestacy if they don’t. In addition, the percentage split in the share of the property does not have to be equal; different shares can be held by each.
Holding property as tenants in common can be useful for those that are unmarried, including friends who want to buy a property together, as well as those who have children from a previous marriage and want to ensure they benefit.
At this time of year, use the opportunity to rethink your approach to study. If you’re returning to studying after taking a hard-earned break over the summer, you’re hopefully doing so feeling refreshed and ready to get stuck in once again. Here are our top tips for regaining your study mojo this autumn.
For most of the UK, it’s been a mixed summer – both in terms of the weather and what we&rquo;ve been allowed to do – and for obvious reasons, foreign holidays haven’t been an option for most of us. Safe to say, it’s hardly been a typical year.
Yet as summer ends and cooler days approach, the new season still heralds a shift and the prospect of new beginnings. Along with the altered temperatures and TV schedules (it’s Strictly Come Dancing fans’ favourite time of year, after all!), your daily routine may well change.
And while many claim not to enjoy the darker, colder evenings or the end of the freedom of summer days, autumn can actually be a great season for kick-starting your study regime.
Here are our top tips for regaining your study mojo this autumn:
Start small
Especially if you’ve had a lengthy break, don’t charge back in thinking you can necessarily do two hours on the trot. Kick off with, say, 25 minutes, perhaps using the Pomodoro tomato timer technique.
By setting more realistic targets, you may feel pleasantly surprised that you find you actually want to keep going, promising yourself you’ll read ‘just one more page’ until you find you have worked through a whole topic.
Don’t think you will get everything done the first time you sit back down to work. Instead, decide what you can achieve in a specific period, and set yourself a ‘small win’ goal.
Need some last-minute help for next week’s J07 exam?
Our mock papers are designed to replicate, as closely as possible, the exam itself. We’ve been preparing CII mock papers now for many, many years and our experienced authoring team ensure the format of our mocks are in the same style as the exam (a short-answer question paper consisting of 15 questions for J07), and we ensure the difficulty and wording of the questions are in the line with the very latest CII exam guides.
We always listen to feedback from our customers, and many of you who sit R06 say it was a shock to the system. The exam structure is different, the remote invigilation is different to the multiple-choice exams and for most candidates, it’s their first experience of a CII written exam.
It’s no surprise then that you’ll need to prepare differently for R06, so in our new How to Pass Guide, we will be setting out some of the most important points to help you with your revision.
Our guide will look at the most common types of questions, how to pick up some of the more straightforward marks, general exam technique tips (don’t underestimate the importance of this for R06!), and some guidance on how to prepare pre- and post-release of the case studies.
Here’s a reminder 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 find out if you have the most up-to-date information, visit the CII website, navigate to your chosen exam and click on ‘learning solutions update’ in the ‘Unit updates’ section in the sidebar.
Note that we keep our resources up-to-date with any updates from the CII.
Did You Miss These Posts on Our Blog?
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
Here are the blog posts you might have missed since our last newsletter:
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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.
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A bit of Friday Fun, but with the added benefit of testing your exam knowledge!
