Hi everyone and welcome to my latest video. Today I'm going to go a bit deeper into the exams you
have to do to become a financial adviser. So I have previously done a video about what you
have to do to become a financial adviser but now I'm going to go into each examination one
by one and break it down for you so you know what you're in for when you start doing them.
So we're going to kick off with the first exam which is called R01 and it's the one I would
expect everyone to do first because once you've done it you can start advising with supervision.
So as I said, once you complete the R01 examination you can start to advise as a financial
adviser as long as you're supervised by someone senior in the firm and who is qualified to be a
supervisor. Now, the R01 exam is called 'Financial Services, Regulation and Ethics' and as it sounds,
it's quite a dry topic. So unfortunately it's the driest of all of them in my opinion, but it's the
one that goes into the depth behind everything that is the foundations for the financial services
industry. So though it might not actually have anything practical in it that you will use when
you are advising clients, it's stuff that you need to know for the basis of all your knowledge.
Because it's quite a dry topic, personally I found it quite difficult to get my teeth into. There are
a lot of acronyms that I learned or that I put to things just so I could remember them, so that's
quite a handy tip. But it's certainly something that you need to read, re-read the textbook more
than once, just to get your head around things and there are certainly other tools at your disposal
that you can dive into and make use of. You can apply for a paper textbook and an electronic
textbook, or just one or just the other. I prefer a paper textbook to be honest because I find it
easier to actually physically sit and flick through books, highlight them, put stickers
on them, but everyone works slightly differently. If you do prefer an eBook then you do have the pdf
version and you do get that if you buy the paper textbook anyway, but I believe you have the option
to just get the eBook if that's what you're after. The textbook is quite long and there are lots of
sections within it but it actually focuses on 11 separate syllabus outcomes that you should know by
the end of the topic and that will come up in the exam. I have the 11 syllabus outcomes here so I'm
just going to read them to you. Funnily enough I don't know them off by heart but for each outcome
I'll tell you how many questions will come up in the multiple choice exam. Learning outcome 1 is
to 'Understand the UK financial services industry in its European and global context'. That has 6
standard format questions in the multiple choice exam. Learning outcome 2 is to 'Understand how
the retail consumer is served by the financial services industry'. This has 12 standard questions
in the exam. Number 3 is to 'Understand the legal concepts and considerations relevant to financial
advice'. That has 9 standard questions. Number 4 is 'Understand the regulation of financial
services'. And that is 6 standard questions. Number 5 - 'Understand the financial regulator's
responsibilities and approach to regulation'. This is a big one - it has 29 questions in the exam.
Number 6 - 'Apply the principles and rules as set out in the regulatory framework'.
This has 4 standard formats and/or 5 multiple response formats. So I'm just going to pause
here and elaborate on that. So a standard format question means you get a multiple choice question
and you have four or five options and only one of those options is right. A multi-response question
means you get a question and four or five options but more than one of the answers is correct. I
don't know how many that is. It might tell you in the question that three of them are correct
or two of them are correct or it might give you no hint whatsoever, so it's really unhelpful,
but essentially there could be questions with two, three or maybe even four of the answers are
correct, so do watch out for those. But it does warn you when you get to that point in the exam.
I will dive into the exam itself a little bit later but let's just carry on with the syllabus
outcome at the moment. So learning outcome 7 - 'Apply the regulatory advice framework to
ensure fair outcomes for the consumer'. This is 5 standard formats or 8 multiple response
formats. Number 8 - 'Understand the range of skills required when advising clients'.
4 standard format questions. Number 9 - 'To understand the financial regulator's use of
principles and outcomes based regulation to promote ethical and fair outcomes'. This has
7 standard format questions. Number 10 - 'Apply the code of ethics and professional standards to
business behaviours of individuals'. 2 standard format questions. And last but not least,
'Critically evaluate the outcomes that distinguish between ethical and compliance-driven behaviours'.
That's 3 standard format questions. Now as I'm sure you can tell from all of that it's really,
really dry content but it is stuff that you need to know to pass the exam, so I would advise you
get stuck in, read all the questions and read the textbook more than once. Highlight sections that
you want to go back to etc. Everyone has their own learning styles so just do what's right for you.
You also have access to something called Revisionmate. If you sign up to the CII online
learning centre you have access to Revisionmate, which is the electronic version of the textbook,
some help in terms of extra things, extra case studies, some mock questions, some mock
tests - they could be really helpful - and some other resources that are also really helpful to
use. So once you've read the textbook through, go and have a look at Revisionmate and and do some
of the tests and see how you get on. There are also historic case studies available or historic
tests available from the CII website that you can get as well, so do have a look at those because
the CII wording of questions can be quite tricky and challenging and it's really helpful to read
the question two or three times before you attempt to answer it. Now in terms of the exam itself,
once you're ready to proceed to booking the examination you can book that online through the
CII website. It's quite straightforward. Certainly now I think they're doing some of it remotely and
they might continue to offer that but when I did it I chose what learning centre I wanted to go to
and they gave me a list of dates that I could choose. Now on the day you will just turn up
at the exam centre, if you're going to an exam centre, otherwise you simply log in
online at home and do it, but you'll log in they'll give you all the information before you
start the exam about how the exam will proceed. They'll tell you it's multiple choice, they'll
tell you how long you have, how many questions it has - from memory I believe it's 100 questions and
it's an hour long but don't quote me on that, I will clarify that in the description below.
But they will give you for each question they will give you the number of answers that are
correct - assume it's one unless they tell you otherwise. So they'll set the question
out and they'll give you four or five different options. Assume that one of those is correct,
they will tell you in the description and they'll tell you in the question if it's more
than one answer that you should be selecting. You can flag questions as you go through,
so if you're not sure I would suggest just picking something and moving on, but flagging
it to go back to later, because if you run out of time and you haven't put an answer you just
won't get a mark, so it's worth just trying to put down some sort of answer just as a chance,
but flagging it and going back to it later. That's what I would advise you do. Now they do say you
get less than a minute to answer each question but just try and stay calm throughout the exam,
just try and answer each question the first time you go through but as I've said, flag up ones
you're not sure on and then when you've completed them all go back to the flagged ones and just have
a read through them and try and answer them again if you're not quite sure. Once you've finished it
you get your result immediately, so you'll submit it and the invigilator will tell you straight away
whether it's a pass or a fail, but they won't tell you what result you've actually got, they
won't tell you what percentage mark you've got. You'll get that via the post or via email later,
but you'll be able to know straight away whether you've passed or failed. If you fail don't worry
about it. You can rebook online or you can do it again quite quickly afterwards. I'm not quite
sure what the current pass rate is but it's generally pretty solid I think. With the R01,
because it's your first multiple choice exam and it's the one most people do first, it can be more
of a test, a bit of a way to just get used to the situation and get used to how they're carried out.
Try and go in positive and definitely use all the resources that are available to you.
I hope that's been helpful as a breakdown of R01. I am going to be going through all the rest of
the R0 exams - R01 to 6 - and hopefully that will be helpful in terms of getting you ready
and prepped for your exam preparations. But if you've got any questions about the examinations
please let me know. Like the video, subscribe to the channel and I'll see you next time.