The CII answers your questions on gap-fill and exam fairness

As part of our Investing in the Profession initiative, we put your burning questions to Steve Jenkins, director of financial markets at the CII.

Q. I have the diploma and have used the gap-fill tool but I cannot obtain easy access to structured continuing professional development (CPD) to fill these gaps. What are you doing to make gap-filling easier?

Matthew Stevens, IFA, B P Sanders and Company

A. Gap-fill is nothing more than the FSA requiring level 4 qualified advisers to ‘top up’ their existing qualifications. This can be done through CPD – there is absolutely no need to take any more exams.

Advisers can use historic CPD to evidence their gap-fill or make use of the plethora of new CPD material available. Personal Finance Society (PFS) members can download all the necessary reading material from the gap-fill tool, attend gap-fill events, watch webcasts of gap-fill seminars or utilise the online ethics tool. Other providers are also offering gap-fill CPD events.

Please don’t be concerned by the use of the term ‘structured’. Structured CPD has nothing to do with being tested, attending an event or having to pay for something. It simply means that you identified a specific learning requirement, found a suitable means of meeting that requirement and then reflected on whether the thing you did met that requirement.

The gap-fill tool and the associated gap-fill CPD provided by the PFS does all of this for you.

We anticipate the FSA will publish the list of accrediting bodies towards the end of 2011. At this point advisers will be able to declare that they have undertaken the necessary gap-fill CPD and we will be in a position to issue you with a statement confirming this. If you have done the CPD offered by the PFS, for example, then this will be sufficient evidence that you have filled your gap.

I appreciate that the FSA’s requirement to gap-fill may be an irritation but it should be a straightforward affair and not something that you should find particularly time consuming.

For an average adviser the total amount of work equates to reading (and understanding) significantly less than a paperback’s worth of information. It is also worth remembering that you still have more than 18 months to do this.

Q. Given that you want to be taken seriously as an accredited body, when are you going to stop making your exams more a test of understanding the question than demonstrating technical knowledge? Questions along the lines of: “Which of the following is not the least most unlikely” seem designed to catch out advisers rather than give them an opportunity to display their professionalism.

James Ross, paraplanner to David Stockdale and David Wilkinson, Foster Denovo.

A. The examinations advisers are required to take to be RDR compliant are all based on a very specific list of learning outcomes defined by the FSA. These were developed by the Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC – now the FSP) following consultation with market practitioners, as well as a range of trade and professional bodies.

All of the examinations are based on these learning outcomes so whichever body you choose as an exam provider, you will be tested on exactly the same things.
The CII’s new diploma in regulated financial planning (R0 units) is required by the FSA to test these learning outcomes – if it didn’t it wouldn’t be RDR compliant. In terms of the questions themselves, these are written by practitioners. You are judged by your peers, normally Chartered Financial Planners.

The CII is itself regulated by OfQual and we are obligated to ensure all candidates are treated fairly. Working closely with practitioners we constantly review our processes (and our exam questions) to ensure that they meet the necessary standards demanded by OfQual and the FSA.

Moderation is commonplace and where questions are shown to be causing confusion among candidates we will happily remove them.