If you are studying for the R01 exam you will know that the study text contains a lot of technical information about the structure of the financial services industry and the regulation of those that work within it, along with some complex legal concepts and many principles and rules to remember.

Our ‘Top Tips for Success’ aims to help you get the best out of your study time and help improve your chances of passing this regulation unit first time.

So, let’s start by looking at the R01 exam itself:

• The assessment is 100 questions
• Most (87) questions are multiple choice
• Other questions (13) are multiple response
• Two hours are allowed for this exam
• The nominal pass mark is 65%
• Previous pass rates can be viewed here
• The recommended number of study hours is 60

1. To comfortably complete 100 questions in two hours, you should spend no more than one minute on each question in the exam
2. If you can stick to this discipline, it will leave you 20 minutes to go back and review any questions you are unsure about
3. To achieve a mark in a multiple response question, you have to select ALL  the correct responses
4. The multiple response questions are likely to take slightly longer to answer than the multiple choice questions
5. Almost one third of all questions will be from Chapter 5 (29 out of 100 questions are from this chapter)
6. Chapter 2 will also be heavily tested, with12 multiple choice questions
7. You should also focus on Chapter 7, with 5 multiple choice and 8 multiple response questions (13 in total)
8. The rest of the chapters have between 2 and 9 questions on each

The CII recommends a minimum of 60 hours of study to prepare for the R01 exam. You may find you need slightly less if you have prior knowledge of some of the content covered in the syllabus but you are still going to need to put in a significant amount of studying.

Several things are key to successful studying: Firstly it is important to have a plan - and stick to it. It is also important to introduce some variety and mix up your study techniques to help keep it fresh and interesting. Study in short bursts, with breaks, and acknowledge your progress with rewards to keep you motivated.

Our “Learning to Learn” package - provided free of charge with every purchase – contains valuable advice and useful strategies to help you discover how you learn best, and to maximise the effectiveness of your study time. You can find out more about these short courses here: Learning to learn courses - Wizard Learning

Of all the R0 exams, R01 is not the most difficult to pass, but it is not the easiest either. Some questions will be knowledge/fact based and pretty straight forward to answer, while others will test your understanding with practical application or analysis type questions. For example, you might be asked who regulates the activities of a bank providing investment advice to its clients, or which body regulates the London Stock Exchange (knowledge/fact based). Or you may be asked about the effect on the economy of a programme of quantitative easing (comprehension question).

So you really do need to have a firm grasp on the rules and regulations as well as wider issues to give yourself a good chance of passing first time.

• Use practice questions at the start, during, and at the end of each study period – this will help to identify areas of weakness to focus on going forward
• Allow sufficient time for studying Chapters 2, 5 and 7 in particular – more than half of the questions in the exam will be from these three chapters
• Learn the statutory objectives of the FCA, and the main principles and rules of the FCA and the PRA, including the approach of these regulators to supervision, discipline and enforcement
• Become familiar with the format and types of questions asked in the exam – complete the CII Exam Guide/Mock exams under exam conditions
• Keep practising with as many questions as you can. This not only helps to cement information in your memory, but also increases your confidence in how to tackle them effectively. Read the question in full and very carefully. It will provide you with the information you need to choose your answer

• Waste time learning lengthy calculations. You might be asked to work out, for example, the Free Asset Ratio of an insurer, but calculation questions do not feature heavily in R01
• Leave any question unanswered. Guess if you have to. In every multiple choice question there are normally 2 answers which you should be able to eliminate as wrong, leaving you with a 50:50 chance of being right and achieving the mark
• Spend more than 1 minute on each question. This will give you time to go back to any questions you were unsure of. If you can’t decide on the correct answer after 1 minute move on, you can always go back and make an educated guess

The assessment questions in the Wizard Learning “R01 Gap Analysis and Assessment Tool” provides a bank of 300 practice questions, with the same  weightings for each Learning Outcome as in the R01 exam.

You can choose either a 25 question test (30 mins) or a 50 question test (60 mins) in either ‘revision style’ (where you will see the correct answer after each question is completed), or ‘exam style’ (where you will see your results at the end). The questions are selected at random for each test and will not repeat until all questions have been viewed.

Your end of test results shows not only your total marks but also the marks scored against each Learning Outcome. All incorrectly answered questions show the correct answer and explanation and a reference to the location in our online course.

You can find out more about the R01 Course, Gap Analysis and Assessment package in our directory.