Brand FT or Wizard Learning?

khitb77

Hi all,

I've just joined your community and would really appreciate some feedback from people who've used Brand FT and/or Wizard Learning to supplement the CII study materials.

I'm studying R02 at the moment and in truth, I'm struggling with the CII materials.

Colleagues have recommended both Brand and Wizard.

I'd be grateful for some information about people's experiences.

I was a bit sceptical about whether the material on these external sites was up to date and aligned to what will be in the actual exam.

Thanks in advance.

benjaminfabi

Hi,

My experience is that the third party material can be a very good supplement to what you get from the CII/PFS. If it wasn't aligned to the syllabus then the businesses would have failed years ago.

Brand FT
Wizard Learning
Bespoke Training Solutions

All give a wide range of options and have their own unique style. My suggestion would be to look at any samples they have (or look at something a colleague used in a previous sitting) and see if any of them immediately jump off the page as being a good fit for you. It will be a personal thing, but in terms of content quality and accuracy, they are all good.

Hoolahan

I passed R01 through to 6 first time using the following resources:

For textbook, I used BTS, their books really bring the subject matter to life, which is very much welcome after trying to digest a horribly bland CII book - can't recommend them enough https://www.bespoketrainingsolutions.com/ they have some really good crib sheets and exam style questions at the end of each chapter too.

For mock exams, I used both BrandFT and KnowR0.

KnowR0 https://knowr0.co.uk/ make fantastic mock exams which are the closet resemblance to the actual exam that I've seen. They also give good explanations of each answer to help you understand why an answer is wrong/right. I can't stress enough how much KnowR0 helped me, their mocks did a fine job of helping me to adjust to the awkward way that the CII tests the syllabus.

khitb77

@benjaminfabi said:
Hi,

My experience is that the third party material can be a very good supplement to what you get from the CII/PFS. If it wasn't aligned to the syllabus then the businesses would have failed years ago.

Brand FT
Wizard Learning
Bespoke Training Solutions

All give a wide range of options and have their own unique style. My suggestion would be to look at any samples they have (or look at something a colleague used in a previous sitting) and see if any of them immediately jump off the page as being a good fit for you. It will be a personal thing, but in terms of content quality and accuracy, they are all good.

Thanks very much for your suggestion. I did get some sample material and opted for Brand FT.

khitb77

@Hoolahan said:
I passed R01 through to 6 first time using the following resources:

For textbook, I used BTS, their books really bring the subject matter to life, which is very much welcome after trying to digest a horribly bland CII book - can't recommend them enough https://www.bespoketrainingsolutions.com/ they have some really good crib sheets and exam style questions at the end of each chapter too.

For mock exams, I used both BrandFT and KnowR0.

KnowR0 https://knowr0.co.uk/ make fantastic mock exams which are the closet resemblance to the actual exam that I've seen. They also give good explanations of each answer to help you understand why an answer is wrong/right. I can't stress enough how much KnowR0 helped me, their mocks did a fine job of helping me to adjust to the awkward way that the CII tests the syllabus.

Thanks very much, I'll look into both of those websites.

TimMatthias

Brand do a calculation workbook, which is well worth getting even if you opt for CII or one of the others.

Online revision mate from CII is best for mocks in my opinion.

SimonT

I have used Brand for R03, and some J papers (I think the securities paper and the DFM one). Always found them useful as they answers are referenced so if you get a question wrong you are directed to the section of study text you need to revisit. Passed each first time.