CII exam tech troubles continue

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CII exam tech troubles continue
Pexels; Mikhail Nilov

The Chartered Insurance Institute is continuing to face technical issues after an IT glitch prevented individuals from accessing exams at the centre.

Last Friday (April 22), Graham Stewart Lockhart, paraplanner trainee at Lockhart Consultancy, said he turned up to a test centre in Glasgow and the invigilator was unable to sign him into the system. 

“The invigilator left a message with his contact at the CII who never returned his call.  The technical team in the UK were unable to resolve the issue and were referred to the team in California.

“I have since e-mailed a complaint on Friday with no response yet and my employer has phoned twice to no great success.”

Speaking to FTAdviser yesterday (April 26), Lockhart said he still had not managed to sit the exam and was waiting for the CII to issue him with a new voucher.

Although he had received the voucher by the end of the day, he described the PSI examination system as simply not “good enough”.

“I’m not the only one not able to sit an exam since it was brought in and won’t be the last,” he said.

A spokesperson for the CII said: “Whilst we are not able to comment on individual issues, we are currently aware of an IT issue which occurred on Friday morning in relation to gaining access to the CII website which was resolved at around 10am GMT. 

“We take these matters extremely seriously and are currently undertaking further investigations to resolve the issue as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to continue to improve the customer experience.  

“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."

FTAdviser understands that in the last two years, the CII has delivered 62,000 examinations, (Jan 2021 to March 2022) and received 1906 complaints, equating to around 3 per cent of candidates.

Last year, the CII faced exam glitches as candidates having taken exams in the past 48 hours were unable to view their results and certificates online.

During the pandemic, the CII also apologised to candidates for “unacceptable instances” including problems with accessing remote invigilation sessions and technical issues during sittings.

Candidates had experienced a delayed start to a remote invigilated exam in July 2020, followed by some candidates experiencing technical issues with a remote multiple choice exam in August.

Technical issues continued in test centres in October 2020, with candidates claiming their computer system froze or shut down hours into the exam.

However, these issues continued into 2021. In March, the CII was forced to issue its exam results a day early after it suffered a technical issue, causing confusion among candidates.

Two years or so after remote exams were put in place for advisers and planners, problems with logging on and taking exams still exist. 

As recently as last month, advisers cited instances of having issues with accessing their exam remotely and others stated they were unable to book their R06 examination with the Chartered Insurance Institute

sonia.rach@ft.com 

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