Candidate Update

The following updates have been made:

Chapter 6, section 2.1.3

Chapter 8, section 2.4

Life Assurance

The amended paragraph reads as follows:

Note that in this industry, the term ‘assurance’ is often used interchangeably with ‘insurance’, although they are not the same thing: assurance usually covers the policyholder for their entire life, while insurance is designed to cover the policyholder for a specific term.

Chapter 3, section 3.4.2

The equation in the example box is amended to read as follows:

Chapter 3, section 2

A value in the table has been amended to 16:00

Chapter 6, section 2.3

The paragraph has been amended to read as follows:

“Generally speaking, active bond strategies are used by portfolio managers who believe that the bond market is not perfectly efficient and therefore subject to mispricing. They can also be employed where it is believed that the market’s view on future interest rate movements (implied by the yield curve) is incorrect or has failed to be anticipated, known as market timing.”

Chapter 6, section 5.3

The paragraph in the 2nd example has been amended to read:

“As the fund is actually valued at $18.75 million, it has outperformed the benchmark by $0.25 (ie, $18.75

million - $18.5 million). The next step is to calculate the absolute outperformance or underperformance

of the fund relative to the benchmark attributable to asset allocation.”

Chapter 7, section 7.4

A new paragraph has been included, and the text reads as follows:

“If an investor receives a dividend from an overseas company that has had WHT deducted, it will still

remain liable to income tax – this raises the risk of double taxation of the dividend or interest income.

To address this issue, governments enter into double taxation treaties (or double taxation agreements

(DTAs)) to agree how any payments will be handled. In very simple terms, the way that a DTA operates is

that the two governments agree what rate of tax will be withheld on any interest or dividend payment.

Double taxation relief (DTR) may apply when an individual is liable to pay income tax on overseas

earnings. As its name suggests, DTR helps to protect individuals from being taxed twice on the same

income - once by the foreign country, and again by their home country. For DTR to apply, the two

countries in question must have a DTA between them. There are many such agreements in place with

countries worldwide, such as the UK and China, the US and Malta, and India and Japan. Generally, these

DTAs set out that tax will be imposed only by the country where the income is earned, the capital gains

are realised, or the foreign property is situated.”

Answers to Multiple Choice Questions 

The following answer references have been amended:

6.       A        Chapter 7, Section 4.6.2

21.     B        Chapter 6, Section 5.2.3

23.     B        Chapter 5, Section 4.2.2

32.     D        Chapter 5, Section 1.4.4

58.     D        Chapter 6, Section 4.4

68.     D        Chapter 3, Section 1.2

75.     D         Chapter 7, Section 3.3

95.     D       Chapter 7, Section 1.3.4

Chapter 3, Section 7.2

Base and Precious Metals

A table has been amended to the following:

 

In chapter 3, section, section 5.2.2 the example explanation on page 83 has changed from:

To:

Syllabus Learning Map:

Learning Objective 5.1.5 now reads:

“know the role of central banks”

Chapter 7, section 2.2

Table on “Risk Profiling Tools”

An incorrectly entered bullet point has now been removed, and the text under “Stochastic modelling” now reads as follows:

Stochastic modelling

•The stochastic model forecasts a range of possible returns from different portfolios of investments. It helps clients choose the appropriate portfolio by showing the range of possible outcomes from each portfolio and the probability of achieving them. • Its advantage is that it helps to explain investment risk to the client, compare alternative strategies and recommend a portfolio of suitable investments. • It is important to understand that the model is making predictions about the future and is, therefore, reliant on its assumptions. A further drawback is that some clients may think these projections are set in stone.

 

Chapter 3, section 1.1.5 Returns, the Annual Equivalent Rate equation has been updated to read:

الصفحة 32:

الصفحة: 287

الصفحة: 324

إضافة اسم (زينة) بعد ابنة السيد أكرم.

الصفحة: 238

تصحيح اتجاه إشارتي أكبر وأصغر في البندين الثاني والثالث.

الصفحة 358:

تغيير السؤال 79.

الصفحة 369

تعديل الإشارة إلى الإجابة الصحيحة.

الصفحة 372:

تعديل الإشارة إلى الإجابة الصحيحة.

Please note that in the PDF Version of the IOC and Certificates workbooks, the multiple choice question answers were missing on pages 33-50 and 33-46 respectively.

The amendments showing the answers in both the IOC and Certificates workbooks have now been made.

The final exam date of the current version has been changed from 10 January 2028 to 10 January 2027.

Chapter 2, Section 1.3.1, second paragraph has been amended to read:

POCA allows reporters (financial institutions) a defence against the money laundering offence by making an authorised disclosure, known as a suspicious activity report (SAR), to seek the consent of the National Crime Agency (NCA) prior to undertaking an activity which the reporter suspects may constitute one of the three (Sections 327–329 of POCA) money laundering offences or ‘prohibited acts’. The ‘consent regime’ is described in more detail in section 5.3 of chapter 8.

Chapter 2, Section 1.4, sixth paragraph has been amended to read:

Regulators, supervisors and even law enforcement agencies of different countries such as the UK, Canada, Belgium and Ireland have developed non-exhaustive lists highlighting risk indicators to help financial firms detect acts of possible financial crime. Some international bodies, like the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), have also developed such risk indicators for their sectors of financial services. The role of the financial services sector in combating financial crime (CFC), and their relations with regulators, will be examined in more detail in chapter 8 (particularly section 1).

Chapter 1, Section 1.11, second paragraph has been amended to read:

Trade sanctions can be categorised as import and export based sanctions. Export sanctions block goods from leaving a country and have generally less impact than import sanctions which block goods leaving a country. Their economic impact varies. For an export sanction, countries are banned from supplying certain goods, services, or intellectual property to the sanctioned nation. These restrictions are commonly used to restrict the supply of specific goods to countries to mitigate their threat or force them to comply with international laws.

Chapter 2, Section 2.4.3, subheading has been amended to read:

2.4.3      Asset Freeze, Recovery and Confiscation

Only on the digital book - Chapter 5, Section 2, the question and answer of ‘What is smurfing?‘ has been removed.

The following updates have been made to your workbook edition:

MCQ 32 option A has changed and therefore the answer has therefore changed as well, depicted below:

الصفحة  82: تغيير مصطلح "الضمان الهجين" إلى "الورقة المالية الهجينة"

Plan d’apprentissage du syllabus:

5.1.5 connaître le rôle des banques centrales

The following updates have been made to your workbook edition.

Page 110, Chapter 5, Section 2.1, last paragraph has been amended to read:

Bank and building society deposits are usually protected by a compensation scheme. This will repay any deposited money lost, up to a set maximum, as a result of the collapse of a bank or building society. The sum is fixed so as to be of meaningful protection to most retail investors, although it would be of less help to very substantial depositors. Although most cash products are not regulated, the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) does regulate banks and other deposit-takers, and depositors based in the UK are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The FSCS provides protection for the first £120,000 of deposits per person with an authorised institution.

Page 171, Chapter 8, Section 1.2, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), second to last paragraph has been amended to read:

Since 2023, the FCA has added a secondary objective to facilitate the international competitiveness and growth of the UK economy in the medium to long term (subject to alignment with international standards).

Page 186, Chapter 8, Section 5.3, text from the last paragraph has been removed and amended to read:

The maximum level of compensation for claims against firms declared in default is 100% of the first £85,000 per person per firm for investments, and £120,000 for bank deposits.

Chapter 4, Section 1.4.1 - Market Risk

The following table has been amended to read: