AF8 Support – How can we help you?
You’re about to make an exam choice decision that will help to shape your career and personal goals. By us working on an end-to-end solution in that we sit, know and fully understand these Level 6 exams you can be assured of our full support throughout the process by a team that fully understands what it takes to get a pass.
Join Maurita on her AF8 journey as she takes us through each step, process and feedback as we aim to improve the AF8 exam experience for everyone!
Assignment 1 – Feedback
So the results are in for Assignment 1. I passed with grades of B,B,B,C and a mark of 60. I have to admit to being a bit disappointed in the mark and would love to see what the CII are looking for to get a substantially higher grade. One of the problems with this exam is that there is so little to go on from the CII and the highest mark I have personally heard of is 67 (that individual got grades of A, B, B, A). What I could tell from the grades however was that I did not give them enough evidence of the use of relevant examples and/or further reading to support answers. I had referenced 10 different sources in Assignment 1 which gave me a grade of C so I know I’ll need to add a lot more to Assignment 2 to get those extra marks available and bump this grade up!
Assignment 2 – Submission
I made a start on Assignment 2 then. Again, I didn’t find the CII exemplar to be hugely useful as the scenario and questions being asked in it were very different to mine. My Assignment 2 was to evaluate a range of suitable and affordable options to enable the client’s to improve their current financial arrangements in advance of retirement in 2 years’ time.
To start with I went off on my own trying to put together what I thought might be suitable options for the clients in the case study. If I’m honest, I did feel a bit lost initially with this one as I felt there were several different avenues I could go down with this assignment and wasn’t sure which was the right one! I chose one path but never felt 100% comfortable that I was giving the examiner what they wanted but plodded on regardless. When I’d finished putting the assignment together I read over it all but still wasn’t convinced with what I’d put together…everything I’d said was fine, it’s just I had this feeling that it wasn’t right for this assignment. For example, there were lots (and lots) of recommendations and advice, be it product changes, actions the couple should take or protection policies that might be useful in the future but I wasn’t thinking critically about evaluating all the options, the why or the advantages and disadvantages.
Top Tips
I then looked at the Expert Pensions Assignment 2 which clarified to me that I was on the wrong path – their assignment was full of analysis, reasons why, advantages and disadvantages of various options and that’s when I realised…it was time to start again, but this time look at all the Expert Pensions materials first! Although what is being asked is different, how it should be answered is the same…it’s all about the analysis and evaluation (which is what the assignment specifically said it was looking for) NOT what you are recommending (that is Assignment 3).
I started by going through the ‘Introduction to Critical Analysis’ material on the website which was invaluable and really showed me what I was doing wrong first time round and what I need to be doing with this assignment. That coupled with their Assignment 2 exemplar gave me a much better idea of the direction my assignment should be taking. Once I was more comfortable in my head with what I should be doing, the task at hand became much less daunting…the problem then was keeping the word count to within 10% of the 2500 limit. I did contact the CII just to confirm that calculations weren’t included in the word count…they aren’t, so that made life (and cutting the assignment down) a little easier! I also made sure to increase the references in this one to try and get that 4th grade up from a C…there were 20 in Assignment 2 rather than the 10 I had for Assignment 1 so let’s hope that’s enough for improvement.
Watch this space…….
So that’s Assignment 2 finally submitted…I think it’s more in line with what they are looking for but we’ll just have to wait and see! Now to get started on Assignment 3 – I’ll let you know how this one has gone when I find out, and until then I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that I chose the right path to go down and it’s the one the examiner wanted!
Our AF8 Course
Our AF8 course was released in January 2019 and is of incredibly high quality, we’ve had some great feedback already from our candidates. The course teaches content, learning outcomes, assessment criteria, techniques, and referencing, using our own original case study and assignments to demonstrate. We give you the tools, including a cash flow modeller and techniques, to help you write your assignments successfully.
The course is supported by our video tutorials and you will have access to our online forum. Make no mistake AF8 is by no means an easy option! Candidates have to be very wary of the plagiarism rule. Building up a solid foundation to your assignments before submitting them is going to save you time, money and whole lot of stress!
