Our Post-Exam Review of the April 2017 CII R06 Exam
Last updated on September 25th, 2019 at 4:31 am
The CII have released the exam paper from their April 2017 R06 exam, so it’s time to see how we did in our pre-exam analysis – of interest to CII R06 candidates.
If you haven’t seen the paper yet, you can access it here.
Case Study 1
Case Study 1 focused on Mark and Penny, a married couple with two young children and a third on its way. Their goals were to:
- ensure they are financially secure in the event of death or serious illness
- provide for their children’s private education
- repay their mortgage by the time Mark is 60
The paper started, as is usually the case, with a fact-finding question – this time on goal number 1: protection in the event of death or serious illness. Ten marks were on offer, and our analysis covered the majority of fact-finding points, as well as extra information to cover the whole of life policy.
The next question was on school fees and the factors an adviser should take into account when formulating a plan. As is the case with all our analyses, we cover fact finding for each objective, and the model answer for this aim provided the necessary information to answer the question.
The exam continued with a question on risk profiling, which is fully covered in our generic section referred to in the analysis.
On the mortgage aim, the fourth question was split into three and candidates had to state three benefits and three drawbacks of making increased payments, paying into the ISA and increasing pension contributions. For this aim, we had provided the pros and cons of using the ISA to repay the mortgage to pick up 6 of the marks but didn’t anticipate the other two areas. However, we are hopeful that as these areas are not so technical candidates will have picked up extra marks.
Question 5 was the recommend and justify question – this time a protection product to satisfy aim 1, and candidates also had to describe the whole of life policy and why it might be suitable. In total, Question 5 was worth 24 marks, and we are very happy to say that both areas were covered in full.
The paper finished with a question on PMI, the details of which are now covered in our generic section.
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Case Study 2
So onto the next case study, which focused on James and Kim, both in their 60’s with independent children.
Their goals were given as:
- ensure that their investments are tax efficient
- minimise their potential liability to IHT
- review their options for generating adequate income in retirement
The exam started with four benefits and four drawbacks of deferring state pension for James. We had covered the rules regarding deferral, so candidates should have been able to use this information to split between the pros and the cons.
Other areas where we had provided complete information were on the following areas:
- the process and conditions to put a lasting power of attorney in place
- recommend and justify the actions they could take to reduce their IHT liability
- the tax efficiency of their investments, including recommending and justifying actions they could take to improve tax efficiency
- the tax treatment of the VCT held by Kim and recommend why an EIS might be more suitable for her
In total, these questions were worth 47 marks.
The questions which we did not anticipate were around James drawing benefits from his ISA portfolio rather than his personal pension as well as the options available to him. However, these questions were only worth 13 marks in total, and well prepared candidates would have been able to use their own knowledge to gain marks.
All in all, we are pleased to see that our analysis team got it pretty much spot-on again in April, and we are confident it would have helped students to achieve a very comfortable pass.
Grab the resources you need!
If you’re studying for your CII R06 exam, and you’re striving for a confident pass, grab our free taster analysis to try out one of Brand Financial Training’s resources for yourself. Click the link to download the R06 case study analysis taster now!
Over to You…
If you’re planning on sitting R06 in July, on what areas will you focus your revision?
