The Short (slightly less dull) Version
I have over 30 years’ experience in the financial services profession.
I have been training people for over 20 of those years.
I have been training R0 exams for over 10 of those years.
I have been successfully using my own R0 training material for over 5 of those years.
I think I can help people pass these fairly tough exams by helping them focus on the right things at the right depth.
Give it a go!
The Long (and slightly dull) Version
It was 2019.
You may recall that year; free of lockdowns, ‘2-metre-Peters’ and face-masks. Harrogate, my adopted home town, hosted the (very wet) UCI World Cycling Championships. Boris Johnson (remember him? – he was the PM before the previous few PMs) won the election. QPR were an inconsistent mid-table Championship football team.
My life at the time involved travelling the country trying to help exam candidates prepare for a successful sitting of a Regulated Diploma (R0) exam. I’d been doing this for over 10 years, having spent over 30 years in financial services and over 20 years in a training capacity.
I have used my own learning material with R0 exam candidates since 2017. My aim was, and has always been, to really focus on the exam, and not all the peripheral information that can get in the way. In my view, I’m helping people pass their driving test; it won’t necessarily make them an expert driver, as that comes with experience and further development, but it allows them out on to the open road on their own. The success rate has been excellent, with well over 80% of candidates taking the exams having been through the training, passing their exam at the first sitting. But that was mainly when I was able to see people, as well as provide documents to view remotely.
I actually loved the travel involved with my job, but it was becoming more evident to me that there were probably better ways of doing things.
One day really sticks out in my mind. I’d been working in a hotel in southern England, in a less-than-desirable training room. During the afternoon, water started leaking from an air-conditioning pipe in the ceiling, dripping down on to the tables, and one of the delegates, below. The windows wouldn’t open and it was sweltering. At the end of the day, one delegate had a 10-minute journey to get home. Two of the others, however, were looking at seven-hour treks involving taxis, trains, buses, hovercraft, jet-skis etc. I may be exaggerating a bit there, but they would still have spent 14 to 15 hours that week travelling for a training day of, roughly, 6-hours input.
Frankly, despite it being my job, it didn’t make sense!
I decided then that I needed to convert my R0-training material into an e-learning version that could be viewed at any time, from any place. Problem was, I had very little experience of creating e-learning, and very little time to do it in between my own ‘day job’.
Cutting a pretty long story a little shorter, in the early part of 2020 I managed to sneak on to an e-learning training course just days before the first national lockdown.
Coincidentally, the Covid-19 situation changed everything, and made the companies who had previously paid for the hotel rooms and expensive train / plane/ jet-ski journeys realise that it probably wasn’t, and hadn’t been, needed. Remote training was now the thing. But remote training is hard, particularly for those with children / dogs / spouses etc in the background, and days spent trying to listen to someone whose Wifi and audio connections are inconsistent can be hard-going!
To me, it made the need for some relevant R0-exam-specific e-learning even more obvious. As my friend Rob rarely fails to point out, this is not exactly a revolutionary concept, but it was surprisingly unusual. There are some options out there, but they seem to commonly blur the lines between e-learning and a document / PDF dump, and between Level 4 (R0 level) and Level 6 (AF level) exam preparation. It took some time, and I needed a lot of help from experienced colleagues, but we think we’ve managed to achieve that distinction. One exam, and one exam level at a time, is best in our view!
- The e-learning aspect is based on a pretty basic format (we’re not winning any prizes for cutting edge technology!) but we know it is effective
- It caters for different learning styles, which you can discover more about in the ‘What we do’ section of the Website
It is now 2026. Even though the days of the pandemic have faded a bit in the memory, I will never go back to travelling around the country doing the exact same job I did beforehand. I shouldn’t need to, in all honesty, and you shouldn’t need to attend such a training event.
We hope you find our material effective in your pursuit of exam success.
Oh, QPR finished the season as an inconsistent mid-table Championship football team (again) but we no longer live in Harrogate so we’ve no idea whether it’s raining or not (it probably is!)Â Aspects of our life have changed, along with many exam candidates. We hope our material helps with your particular study approach.
Jeff Gravestock FPFS: Founder of knowR0 (and a frequently frustrated football fan)
Fellow of the Personal Finance Society
*One of the aspects that don’t change are the ridiculously out-of-date CII R0 Exam Guides; but that’s a conversation for another day!
