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John Smith FPFS, Technical Manager at Redmill Advance, on the smart, efficient route from Diploma to Chartered Financial Planner.
Most advisers leave Level 4 with the same intention: "I'll do Chartered eventually." Then life happens. The book of clients grows. The diary fills. And the AF exams sit on the to-do listfor another year, then another.
The advisers who actually get there tend to do one thing differently. They plan the route before they start.
I sat down with John Smith FPFS, Technical Manager at Redmill Advance and Fellow of the Personal Finance Society, to map out the smartest, most efficient way from Diploma to Chartered. Before joining us, John spent seventeen years coaching advisers through their Diploma and Advanced Diploma exams at Quilter's Financial Adviser School, 1825 Financial Planning, Towry and Edward Jones. He has guided more advisers through the AF exams than most people will sit in a career. What follows is the plan he gives the students he coaches.
The jump from Level 4 to Level 6 is not a small one. Level 4 sits at roughly A-level standard, or first-year undergraduate. Level 6 is full honours degree. You are condensing what wouldnormally be a three or four-year university course into around two years, while working full-time and building a client book.
This explains why the AF exams take what they take. It also explains why the sequence you choose has a real impact on whether you finish.
For anyone working through the CII route, the structure is:
The standard plan is four AF units to get the 120 credits, then a further 70 credits from other units of your choice.
Everyone's route looks slightly different. The smart routes share a pattern.
AF5 is the mandatory financial planning process unit at Level 6. The structure, the assessment style and the approach are very close to R06.
If you have just sat R06 and you know you are going on to Chartered, AF5 is the natural next exam. The material is fresh. The assessment muscle is warm. You are 30 advanced credits in before you have time to lose momentum.
This single sequencing decision saves a lot of advisers a lot of time.
A question John gets often: "Can I sit two AF exams together to get this done quicker?"
His recommends not to ‘double bubble’ exams. These are degree-level exams. They require full focus. Sitting two at once tends to mean failing both, and you have lost six months waiting for the next sitting.
There is one exception worth knowing. The CISI's PCIAM (Private Client Investment Advice and Management) covers similar ground to AF1 (taxation) and AF4 (investment) combined. Some advisers who want to keep an investment management route open take PCIAM as a way to build that specialism while collecting Level 6 credits. It is a longer study commitment than a single AF, and the format switch between CII and CISI is not trivial. But for the right adviser with the right career direction, it works.
AF1, AF4 and AF5 are sat exams. AF8 (retirement income planning) is not. It is three coursework assignments you submit over twelve months, open book, at your own pace.
That changes how you plan it. AF exams sit twice a year. After you sit one, you have a couple of months waiting for the result before deciding whether to book the next. Most studentstreat that as downtime. The efficient ones use it to chip away at AF8 in the background.
By the time they have passed AF1, AF4 and AF5, AF8 is largely already done.
You still need 70 more credits beyond the 120 from AF units. The temptation is to grab whatever exam looks shortest. The smarter approach is to align them with what you are already studying.
A few patterns John recommends:
You are essentially studying for two exams for the price of one. And you finish with a coherent specialism, not a random collection of credits.
Done well, the full route from Diploma to Advanced Diploma is roughly two years.
That assumes one AF every six months, AF8 progressed in the background between sittings, and the additional credits picked up alongside related AF revision. It also assumes you are committed, you have a real study plan in your diary, and you are honest with yourself about what your week actually looks like.
There are no shortcuts. There is no fast track. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
The technical answer is that Chartered makes you more marketable, opens up senior roles, and helps firms position themselves to a more discerning client base.
The bigger answer is about the profession itself. Your clients work with chartered accountants. When they need someone to handle something that genuinely matters, they look for the highest professional designation in the field. Financial planning should be no different.
Chartered is not the easy route. It is the one that puts you on the same shelf as the other professionals your clients trust.
There has been talk for over a decade that Chartered (Level 6) will eventually become the entry-level standard for the profession. John's view, which I share: probably not. What is morelikely is that Level 4 will at some future point include more skills-based and applied assessment, while Level 6 remains the professional development qualification that signals you’re at the top of your game.
Either way, the case for getting there has not weakened. If anything, the firms doing serious holistic planning are the ones leaning hardest into Chartered designations across their adviserteams.
The students John coaches through this tend to share three things: a clear plan written down before they start, a study rhythm that fits around a working diary, and the discipline to keep going when life gets in the way.
The plan is the bit you can sort today.
If you are looking for a fresh perspective on your organisations exam training needs, e-learning and CPD - book a call with the Redmill team to discuss how we can help.
Redmill Advance is a leader in helping UK financial advice firms get their people qualified or chartered.
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Redmill Advance has been a leading provider of training & development services to the UK financial advice market since 2018 and is based in Linlithgow, Scotland.
