CeMap qualifications as career choice please advice

manuce

Hi,

My wife joined me from back home and is trying to find work, so some friend told us to do CEMAP exam.I would like to keep the long story short and will be thankful if someone who has been through this can give us some advice/guidance.

1: How easy/hard it is to find work after CEMAP ?

2: Does she has to do all 3 modules in order to find work and gain experience?

3: What would be cheaper way to get course material and stuff ?

4: she doesn't have any financial background, I have read that one doesn't need a financial background to gain CEMAP.


On the IFS website its cost £160 and on ebay it cost £20 pound which would be a no brainer but just wanted to see other people route towards gaining CEMAP.

I will be very very thankful for you advice or PMs.

thanks for reading,

Manuce

Robbo33

Hi
I am also wanting to get CeMAP qualified and have been reading around the subject a bit over the past week or so. The £160 from IFS gets you the study materials and the exam fee. If you buy study material from ebay you still have to pay £160 per module to take the exam anyway. So if you are wanting to do it the cheapest way, the IFS is the way forward. Bear in mind that you don't get any 'support' from a tutor or anyone, and the 3 x £160 literally just gets you the study packs and the exam entry. There are countless providers that offer distance learning packages for CeMAP where you get study materials, possibly bespoke training software / online support, resits for exams, past papers, f2f training, but for a huge fee in comparison to the IFS option. If your wife is comfortable 'teaching herself' then go with the IFS offering.
Hope that helps!

ACG

Passing the exams is the easiest bit.

If you want to become an advisor you have to get CAS (Competent advisor status)... you have to get someone to sign you off.

Robbo33

Thanks ACG, I have a question for you:
If you are an intelligent (!) person, develop a good knowledge of the market, have background aplenty in dealing with the public and explaining things clearly etc, how long do you reckon it could take to get CAS from the firm you work for?
I am currently a secondary school teacher earning £35k; assuming the above, how long would it take for me to achieve these earnings please?
I suppose that could be a 'how long is a piece of string' question, but maybe you can shed some light for me.
Thanks!

ACG

It really does depend, you write a few cases and they get looked over to check they are up to standard.

The sooner you write the cases and they are up to standard the sooner you can get signed off. It could be a week, it could be 6 months it could be longer.

Is there any reason you would want to go from being a teach to a broker? Im from Manchester, the schools we had were not great so I know it can be stressful but being a broker isnt without its stresses -there is a thread called the broker blues...

Dont get me wrong, i love my job but thats only because im my own boss and i can turn business away if i dont want it. If your employed your stuck with whoever walks through the door, with targets, frustrating lenders etc etc.

Robbo33

Thanks for that. I am considering leaving teaching because the job is wearing me down so much! And, despite the school where I work being a 'good school' (outstanding apparently, according to Ofsted, but what do they know haha), I am sick of certain things and people that are school specific rather than professions specific. Anyway, I digress! I know that being a mortgage advisor/broker/consultant (are they interchangeable?) is not going to be a walk in the park, I feel that I could well be pretty good at it, and I would enjoy a different challenge. I am a bit geeky and am quite interested in financial products and such, I think I would like to be able to match people up with the right product etc, and all the stuff that goes with it.
As a total newbie to the world of mortgage advisors, I am discovering a whole raft of acronyms and terminology that I am slowly unravelling; AR / DR / RI / CAS / RMA / Network / etc; it's nuts!
Thanks for your help ;-)

ACG

DIP/AIP/MIP (all the same thing).

Broker/Advisor etc are all the same yes.

Best of luck, also bare in mind that when you earn money (ie make a sale), it will be about 2-3 months before you actually see the money.

Robbo33

Great, thanks. Going to bury myself in reading now

ACG

enjoy.

Get Cemap 1 out of the way and the rest will seem like a doddle.

Robbo33

am reading all kinds of other posts you've written in other threads, very useful information! V steep learning curve. and that's before the joys of CeMAP 1 ha ha

ACG

Im only in my 2nd year, this site is great for me as i learn from it and the other brokers on here too.