Advisers experience tech issue on CII mortgage exam

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Advisers experience tech issue on CII mortgage exam
Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

The Chartered Insurance Institute’s exam portal experienced fresh “technical difficulties” this morning causing delays to advisers sitting their exams.

At 10am today (July 26), Daniel Williams, a financial adviser at Morgan Williams & Co, tried to log on for his CF6 mortgages exam, only to find a server error displayed.

For the first 15 minutes of his exam, Williams could not log in to sit it. He had to ring the PSI, the operator of the secure browser advisers use to sit their CII exams, before eventually being let back in.

“I hit a server error so it kicked me out of my account and now I can’t log in to the exam,” Williams told FTAdviser before being let back online.

The server error message said the CII was “currently experiencing technical difficulties”, and that it was working to resolve this “as soon as possible”.

The IT issues also affected one other adviser sitting the exam, out of a total of 11. The 9 others sitting it completed the exam. Both disrupted candidates will be offered a free resit.

A CII spokesperson said: "We are aware of an IT issue, which resulted in a couple of candidates being unable to access their CF6 Mortgage Advice exam for 15 minutes this morning."

The CII has been hit with a number of technical issues over the past year. Last month, a number of advisers faced delays in the issuing of their Statement of Professional Standing certificates.

In June, a financial planner claimed that the CII’s exam booking service was “extremely poor”, and "no longer fit for purpose" after it took him more than three weeks to book an exam.

And in April, an IT glitch prevented individuals from accessing CII’s exams at its exam centre.

Between January 2021 to March 2022, FTAdviser understands the CII has delivered 62,000 examinations and received 1,906 complaints, equating to around 3 per cent of candidates.

In response to the IT glitch in April, the CII said it took these matters “extremely seriously”.

They added: “It is only from such issues being reported directly to us that we can continually improve our offering, which allows so many candidates to complete their qualifications and continue their career journey."

ruby.hinchliffe@ft.com