With CII AF2, it’s all about applying the knowledge – April 2016 Exam Review

It’s now the turn of CII AF2 the Business Financial Planning module and the scrutiny of this April’s exam paper. This review of the questions set last time around will be useful to AF2 candidates in focusing their exam revision.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here is the link:

http://www.cii.co.uk/media/6827649/af2_april_2016_qp.pdf

Question 1

Question 1 was an interesting read with two siblings seemingly running their deceased father’s business into the ground, and two existing employees staging a takeover.  It was like reading the script from a soap!  After the initial amusement, we were faced with the questions.  These were on a variety of topics: winding up orders, the business not paying its debts, administrator appointment, and a 5-point calculation question on capital allowances and then finishing with internal controls, the position of the existing employees and the statutory duties of directors under the Company’s act.  We can imagine that after scribbling the answers to all of those questions, the candidates must have been pretty weary….

Question 2

Thank goodness for Question 2 then; this was nice and short and covered the familiar topic of partners working together without a partnership agreement.  The questions seemed to be fair, and most students would have prepared themselves well for these types of questions.

Question 3

Equally, we feel Question 3 wouldn’t have caused candidates too many problems; this question concerned a sole shareholder and director.  There were quite a few more calculations in this one, which overall gave 23 marks of the available 40; these were on car benefit, capital allowances, corporation tax, dividends and the director’s income tax position.  The rest of the questions mainly focused on the overdrawn director’s loan account.

Not Too Bad

All in all it didn’t seem like too bad a paper, as long as candidates had prepared themselves well and had used a number of past papers for a clear understanding of the types of questions asked in AF2.

Pass Rates

Historically, the pass rates for this exam have been low; in 2012 and 2013 they didn’t reach 50% although 2015 saw a jump to 52.27% from the previous year’s 50.54%.

It’s About Applying the Knowledge

The CII state that their J03 the Tax and Legal Aspects of Business is the only manual you need to study for this exam.  With most other AF subjects they quote at least two.  This should make planning studying easier with only 15 chapters to get through.  But as with any AF exam, it’s all about the application of this knowledge.  The book is great for theory, but you need the old exam papers to see how this theory is then applied.

Comparing to Previous Exams

There was little or no overlap on the knowledge tested with the previous exam sitting – the October 2015 paper tested totally different areas – here is the link if you haven’t seen it:

http://www.cii.co.uk/media/6451916/af2_october_2015_qp.pdf

In fact, the last few exam papers have all been quite different, but they are still useful to see the types of question that come up, if there are any recurring themes and also the examiner’s comments from previous years.

AF2 is a tough exam and the J03 manual is one of the thickest the CII produce, but all the information that you need is in there, so prepare a good study plan, make sure you stick to it and practise answering past exam questions using bullet points. It will save you time, and you will have less of a headache after the 3-hour marathon you will have just endured.

Grab the resources you need!

If you’re studying for your CII AF2 exam, and you’re wanting to feel confident on exam day, you’ll need to practise applying the knowledge. Grab our free taster to try out one of Brand Financial Training’s resources for yourself.  Click the link to download the AF2 calculation workbook taster now!

Over to You…

If you’re planning on sitting AF2 in the near future, which areas do you think will pose the greatest challenge for you?