Our Post-Exam Review of the January 2024 CII R06 Exam
Our Post-Exam Review of the January 2024 CII R06 Exam
The exam guide from the January 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 article is correct as at 5 March 2024.
You can access the exam guide here.
Case Study 1
Case Study 1 introduced us to Daniel and Sophia.
Their financial aims were to:
- ensure they can generate a sustainable income throughout retirement;
- consider the issues relating to downsizing their property in retirement;
- improve the tax-efficiency of their current financial arrangements.
| Question | Our Analysis |
|---|---|
| State the additional information that a financial adviser would require in order to advise Daniel and Sophia on the suitability of their financial arrangements to meet their stated objectives. | We always cover a fact-finding question for each of the client’s aims, so candidates who had revised our analysis should have made a good start to the exam. |
| Explain to Daniel and Sophia the benefits of making additional pension contributions to their qualifying workplace pension schemes in advance of retirement. | Here, we see another straightforward question worth 13 marks. We had covered the benefits of making pension contributions and the benefits of increasing contributions to their workplace schemes. |
| Explain in detail to Daniel and Sophia the options available to them to draw benefits from their pension funds when they retire and identify the key benefits of each option. | The option of annuity purchase and FAD were covered in our analysis, but we had not considered the use of UFPLS. We hope most candidates could have picked up the extra couple of marks for UFPLS using their existing knowledge of pensions. |
| Outline the key reasons why Daniel and Sophia should review the suitability of their current pension funds. | In our analysis, we had detailed the factors relating to making any changes to their pension funds and considered the pros and cons of their existing funds. These answers could have been adapted to answer this question. |
| Explain to Daniel and Sophia the relevant financial considerations that they should take into account when downsizing their current home. | This was clearly highlighted in the case study; hence we had anticipated this question so model answers were provided in the analysis. |
| Recommend and justify a range of actions that Daniel and Sophia could take to improve the tax-efficiency of their financial arrangements in advance of their retirement. | Improving tax-efficiency was one of their aims; therefore, we had anticipated a ‘Recommend and justify’ question on this subject, and full model answers had been provided in our analysis. |
Case Study 2
Onto case study two where we met Maya and Sanjeev.
Their financial aims were to:
- continue to build up a deposit to purchase their first property;
- review their affordability of making pension contributions for Maya;
- meet their protection needs.
| Question | Our Analysis |
|---|---|
| Explain to Sanjeev and Maya why a risk profiling tool might be useful in assessing their attitude to risk. | Whilst we had highlighted the importance of confirming ATR for Maya and Sanjeev, we had not covered this exact question for this case study. |
| Explain to Sanjeev and Maya the importance of holding an adequate emergency fund and outline how they could identify a suitable level of emergency fund. | We had covered the need to establish the level of emergency fund required and the amount usually required, but this specific question had not been covered. We hope candidates could have used their own knowledge of why an emergency fund is required to pick up most of the additional marks on offer here. |
| Recommend and justify how Sanjeev and Maya could each use a Lifetime ISA to help to meet their stated objectives. | Lifetime ISAs were covered in detail both in a ‘Recommend and justify’ question and an ‘Explain the benefit of‘ question. All the model answers were therefore provided in the analysis. |
| Explain to Maya why she should opt into her employer workplace pension scheme. | Opting out of a pension scheme in most circumstances would not be advisable; hence we had anticipated a question on why Maya should opt in. |
| Outline the key factors that Sanjeev and Maya will need to take into account, when establishing their current protection needs. | We had provided model answers to a ‘factors’ question on their protection needs which could have been used to answer this question in full. |
| State the key reasons why Sanjeev may wish to take out an individual income protection insurance policy rather than a critical illness policy to meet their current protection needs. | We had covered income protection and critical illness in detail, and our model answers could have been adapted to answer this question in full. |
| Explain to Sanjeev why he may wish to consider the use of a global equity tracker fund in addition to his current UK equity tracker fund within his pension plan. | Whilst this exact question was hard to predict, the benefits of tracker funds and diversification were covered in detail in our analysis and could have been used to answer this question. |
| Identify eight key issues that a financial adviser should discuss with Sanjeev and Maya at the next annual review. | This ‘review’ question appears in most R06 papers, and model answers had been provided in our analysis. |
Overall, this paper was relatively straightforward. Well-prepared candidates would have anticipated most of the questions asked and candidates using our analysis would have been provided with model answers for most of the questions asked.
Grab the resources you need!
If you’re studying for your CII R06 exam, and you’re wanting to feel more confident on exam day, 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!
