CII awards BTS’s Luiza Todd prize for achieving highest exam score

16 October 2021

Bespoke Training Solutions (BTS) director Luiza Todd has been awarded the Chartered Insurance Institute Layborn prize for achieving the highest score in the R04 Pensions and Retirement Planning unit in 2020.

Luiza scored 49 out of a possible 50 marks, the highest score achieved by a candidate in 2020. The prize is awarded annually on this basis.

R04 is a notoriously difficult R0 unit, which now has the lowest countrywide pass rate of all the R01 to R06 papers.

The 2020 CII published 2020 pass rate for the pensions R04 unit was 61%. It has now taken over from R03 Personal Taxation, as the toughest R0 unit.

BTS designers and facilitators sit R0 exams each year. This is to ensure that their knowledge is as up-to-date as possible, Luiza says. “It also ensures that BTS candidate support is as ‘exam relevant’ as it possibly can be.”

Luiza says she strives to be the best she can be in the support she provides to BTS R04 candidates.

“One of my aims is to ensure that BTS R04 materials such as the study guide, e-Learning module and R0 study buddy app questions are the best they can possibly be, to give candidates the best exam support BTS can. The pension unit is difficult enough and we want to help candidates pass this unit first time.”

Another of her goals, she says, is to convert as many candidates as possible to her love and passion for all things pensions. “So many clients need our help to ensure their retirement is a comfortable one, yet many are intimidated by all the perceived complexities of this financial planning need area.”

Commenting on being awarded the prize, Luiza says: “I am absolutely delighted to have won this prize (chuffed to bits!), and to have been singled out in this way for pensions technical excellence. Anyone that knows me will understand and appreciate the passion I have for this subject matter (I know that sounds a bit sad, and I don’t care!)

“The prize came with a bound certificate plus £100 which I have donated to the Lymphoma Association in memory of my brother Andy who passed away from Non Hodgkins Lymphoma aged 39.”

Professional Paraplanner