This article is relevant to anybody who wants to further their career in the financial services or insurance industries, whether you are at Certificate Level or Diploma Level.
Will We Do What You Want?
In a nutshell – ‘yes, we will’.
At the end of 2008 a huge number of you took the time to fill out our survey and tell us what YOU wanted us to do for you in 2009. Here’s what you told us… And more importantly, here’s our response (the wheels of big business may grind slowly, but in a small dedicated business such as Brand Financial Training we ensure that we meet your needs as soon as we can without bureaucracy and red tape).
We asked you how you preferred to learn – what format and what type of product. The majority of you stated that your preferred type of product was mock exam papers. This is great news as we provide these for every exam we currently cover with other exams becoming available in the next month or so.
There were some specific comments made regarding our mock exam papers. It was interesting (but not surprising) to hear some of you say that our mock papers were harder than the exams, others saying they were easy in comparison, and others saying they were spot-on. This is not a surprise because each and every exam paper set by the CII is not identical – some are easier than others so it is inevitable that some will seem easier or harder than ours. Our mock papers are there to measure your level of knowledge and understanding of the subject before you sit your exam. Sitting questions is one of the best ways of testing for this. Get your hands on all the mock papers you can and just practise, practise, practise. No-one can predict what questions you will get in your own particular exam, and everyone is different in terms of what they find hard and what they find easy.
Nearly three-quarters of you stated that your preferred learning format was text ie. reading. This came as a surprise to us as statistically there is usually more of a spread between reading, listening, watching and doing. Perhaps this lean towards reading is because the CII provide the exam syllabus in study text format, therefore leaving you with little choice but to read the study text. However a high percentage of you also said you liked to learn by listening, watching, writing and practising calculations. In fact, there was not one method of learning that scored badly. This tells us that you want us to continue providing a broad range of learning materials using a wide number of learning methods.
You were particularly keen for us to produce multimedia module-based learning allowing you to purchase learning resources for those areas of an exam where you need more help, and you were also keen for us to produce audio CDs.
In response to this, Brand Financial Training plan to produce multimedia module-based learning products as well as more audio-based products in 2009. But do remember that we currently provide an online (multimedia) training program for CF1, plus audio-based masterclasses for CF1, CF2 and CF6. We will be building on these throughout 2009.
We also asked whether you would find a free forum to discuss exam issues, or a free regular blog, useful. We were blown away by the positive response to both options. So we are now working hard on launching a blog that you can read and comment on. We will then look at the options for an online forum.
With regards pricing, the majority of you told us that we had our product pricing just right. We always strive to keep our prices at a reasonable level to serve two purposes. Firstly, to ensure that individuals as well as businesses can afford them, and secondly to ensure that we can invest enough in the development of products to ensure that they meet our high standards. Our prices are competitive, but it’s always worth remembering that cheap can often mean a very poor product, and expensive doesn’t always mean a fantastic product. We will ensure that our prices remain ‘just right’.
You also made it clear that you’d be interested in us providing an affiliate program whereby you can earn money by recommending us to friends and colleagues who then make a purchase. Great news! We are developing this as I write and you will be hearing more about this very shortly.
We were extremely pleased at the response to our question asking you how you rate Brand Financial Training and our products and service. Every single one of you rated us as Helpful (35.2%), Very Helpful (40.7%) or Extremely Helpful (24.2%). This is absolutely fantastic and we are so glad that we are achieving our aim of helping you to pass your exams first time. We will of course keep this up in 2009. It therefore is not surprising that most of you would recommend us to your colleagues. Thank you so much.
It also seems that many of you are looking forward in 2009 to completing Certificate level exams and moving onto Diploma level exams. We are now developing products for Diploma in Financial Planning exams (J01 – J07) with mock papers already available for J01, J02 and J04 (in the next few days) with J03, J05, J06 and J07 following shortly. We are also currently working on mock papers for FA2. We also discovered that CF2 is high on the list of priorities as is CF5. We will therefore ensure that we meet your needs in these exams, as well as the other CF, J0, FA and IF exams in 2009.
Some specific comments were made regarding our Certificate in Insurance exams. We currently offer mock papers for IF1 and there were queries regarding whether we would be producing more for the other IF exams. The simple answer is ‘yes’ but we cannot provide timescales at present. Please bear with us.
There was a particularly interesting comment about the use of webinars as part of our offerings. This is a great idea and is something we are going to look into further. Thank you so much for your input – you know who you are!
We’re glad to hear that you also find our monthly newsletter useful (you’re reading it right now). We will keep producing this newsletter for you in 2009. If you have any ideas that you want us to cover, just email us at enquiries@brandft.co.uk
WINNERS - £25 HIGH STREET VOUCHERS
And of course all those who filled out our survey were entitled to an entry to win one of two £25 High Street vouchers. Congratulations to Ritika Sethi and Niamh Cashin. Ritika and Niamh, you should have an email in your inbox regarding this.
Thank you once again for all your fantastic responses – both positive and negative. It’s good to see that Brand Financial Training are on the right track. You’ve helped us see exactly what you want from us, as well as what existing areas we can build on, and in some areas improve on.
We are committed to continue to provide an exceptionally high standard of product and service in 2009 and will be expanding into additional exams as well as expanding products available for existing exams.
Together we can maximise your potential, and achieve incredible levels of success.
In the words of Bob the Builder – “Can we build it?”… “Yes, we can!”. |
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