CFP UK (CISI) study plan

Map the Financial Planning syllabus into a one-page checklist of every learning outcome you must be able to evidence, marking each as known, shaky, or unknown.

Draft a full fact-find and client risk-profiling summary for a hypothetical couple in their early 40s, covering objectives, attitudes to risk, capacity for loss, and time horizons.

Explain the six-step financial planning process in writing, showing where each step feeds the next and where regulatory obligations on suitability bite.

Build a personal glossary of at least 30 Financial Planning terms you could not define from memory at the start of the week.

Construct an integrated lifetime cash-flow projection by hand for the week-1 couple, covering income, expenditure, tax, savings, and a stress test for redundancy and for early death.

Identify the protection shortfalls the projection reveals and justify each recommended policy type and sum assured.

Reconcile the projection against the client's stated objectives and write up the advice in a structure a compliance reviewer would accept.

List the assumptions in your projection and state which single assumption most changes the recommendation.

Compare term, whole-of-life, endowment, and income protection contracts on cost basis, term, payout triggers, and trust treatment, in a comparison table you build yourself.

Calculate the protection gap for three different household profiles and select the appropriate sum assured and policy term for each.

Explain the tax treatment of premiums and benefits for life cover, income protection, and critical illness, including relevant trust and inheritance tax points.

Draft a suitability letter for one protection recommendation that addresses affordability, exclusions, and the client's duty of disclosure.

Sit a timed mixed set of Financial Planning and Protection questions under exam conditions and mark it against the syllabus checklist.

Diagnose every wrong answer by root cause: knowledge gap, misread question, calculation error, or time pressure.

Re-teach the three weakest topics to yourself in writing, then re-attempt the questions you got wrong without notes.

Review the protection suitability letter from week 3 against a checklist of what a good answer contains and rewrite the weakest section.

Build a table of the main investment wrappers and tax treatments, showing which wrapper suits which client objective and why.

Calculate after-tax returns for the same portfolio held in an ISA, a pension, and a general investment account, and state the break-even holding period for each.

Explain the relationship between risk, return, and diversification, and show how asset allocation changes for a 30-year-old versus a 60-year-old client.

Summarise the key features and risks of collective investments, investment bonds, and direct equities, and match each to a suitable client profile.

Compare pension accumulation vehicles, including workplace schemes and personal pensions, on contribution limits, tax relief, charges, and access rules.

Calculate the retirement income need for a client targeting a specific income in today's terms, adjusting for inflation and a stated life expectancy.

Model the effect of contribution timing, fund charges, and a market downturn in the five years before retirement on the final pot.

Explain the main decumulation options and the risks each carries, and match each option to a stated client circumstance.

Work through the tax treatment of pension contributions, tax-free cash, and withdrawals, including the annual and lifetime allowance rules in force for the exam year.

Explain state pension entitlement, qualifying years, and how deferral and contracting-out history affect the forecast.

Identify the regulated advice points around pension transfers and the circumstances in which a transfer is unlikely to be suitable.

Build a one-page decision tree that takes a client's age, pot size, and income need and points to a decumulation approach.

Sit two full-length timed mock exams under exam conditions and record scores by domain.

Rework every question answered incorrectly or guessed, writing the correct reasoning in your own words.

Revisit the error logs from weeks 4 and 8 and confirm each root cause has been closed out.

Write a final one-page summary sheet of formulas, tax rates, and rule-of-thumb figures you will review on exam morning.