A few years ago I read an article from Finance Asia, which reported that even a Harvard graduate had failed the Paper 1 exam for several times! Some senior executives of banks had expressed grievance to me that they were "too old" to take this exam.
Is this paper so difficult to the new entrants to the financial industry? I would say "yes" due to the following reasons:
- Some beginners have too little knowledge about investment products & markets, thus would feel even harder to understand the underlying regulations. They may take Papers 1, 7 & 8 at the same time. In the Paper 1 classes, it is no surprise that some people would ask me "what ordinary share is".
- Securities regulations per se is quite a boring subject and there are too many trivial requirements to memorize. Unless you are a legal or compliance practitioner, how come you would be motivated to study the ordinances and codes?
- The HKSI's study manual for Paper 1 is the most relevant stuff for studying. But unfortunately, in my opinion, the manual is not written in a user-friendly way. It has covered (or copied) too many regulatory materials but not effectively digested them for the readers.
(Note on 2008.11: HKSI has recently released one (and only one) past paper (Dec 2006) of the Paper 1 exam. You may download the paper from HKSI's website and refer to my explanations of the answers from this blog.)
I understand that some peope failed their Paper 1 or Paper 2. Those people are U grad; Master degree grad; CFA etc. Yet were unable to handle one simply test.
ReplyDeleteI have not tried any LE. Yet I have read through some materials. They are not well written yet, I personnally dont think they are not useful for the exam. In fact, they hightlight the important points. Nothing is perfect. To get through any exam, apart from the specified, you need to read additonal material as well for an understanding.
I am pretty sure that people attempting the exam did not take it seriously enough.
For people wish to spend the less amount of time, I suggest:
Read through and understand the Introduction, objectives and summary;
concentrate on the requirements of the more important documents (eg Code of Conduct, Internal control guidelines); more important Rules (eg client money/securities Rules, keeping of records); important requirements of the FRR) and more important SFO provisons (eg cold calling, short selling, offences [including providing misleading info to SFC or destruction of records]); to know some marco things (eg RO and Directors' responsibilities [look, they will be held responsible for things done by others. It is spelt out in the SFO and Code of Conduct]);
Try to look at the firm (what binds a firm) then the very senior (what binds the directors) then the senior (what binds the ROs);
Must know the consequent of not doing something (eg penalty, fit and proper, misconduct);
In addition, must learn by heart all specified requirements e.g. 7 days (business or calendar?); 2 months; 3 months; 7 years; 21 days; 2; 9; 14 days; 1 week; within 1 day etc.
Perhaps viewer see the above is crab yet it is not easy to be a professional. I think we all will benefit from a profession with a tougher entrance exam.
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