Dear Wizard Learner

The final standards for the Retail Distribution Review in respect of their core exam units have been published.

It is these standards that will form the basis of content and assessment for all future RDR compliant level 4 qualifications, starting from next year.

The Financial Services Skills Council website contains the proposed standards which were just updated on 1/12/09.

Core units
The final core standards can be found here covering the 3 core subjects of:

Financial Services, regulation and ethics
Personal Taxation
Investment principles and risk

Specialist units
With regard to the non-core (specialist) units, the FSSC has recently drafted proposed standards that are currently in the consultation stage.

It is unlikely because of this, that we shall know what the awarding bodies will offer until the second quarter of next year with the first sittings taking place later in 2010.

The remaining standards that will compete the diploma (being consulted on) are available here covering:

Retail Investment Advice - advising on Packaged Products
Retail Investment Advice - advising on Securities/Derivatives or advising and dealing in Securities/Derivatives

You will see from these statements that there is much cross over with existing qualification syllabi. In addition, the FSA's “no regrets policy” on current level 4 qualifications mean that you should really NOT delay your preparation and revision for future exams.

We will of course add new items to the site as the new diploma exams take shape as soon as we hear anything further.

Kind regards

Mike

Wizard Learning

For all our training modules see here.

Our technical training system provides 4 courses, monthly technical updates and assessments see here.