About 18 months ago, I began writing a book about my experiences in the insurance industry.

Have you ever been frustrated when your Coach or Mentor doesn't seem to understand what it's like to work in your world?

Do any of the following questions sound familiar to you?

The insurance exams are just a week away. Hopefully, if you followed some of my revision tips you found them useful and you are now feeling confident with your level of knowledge .

Now, the important thing is to employ effective exam technique to ensure that you secure that all important pass.

Here are some of my top tips which hopefully you will find helpful.

The CII exams are only 5 weeks away. Now is the time to start planning your revision to maximise your chance for success.

Here are my ‘5’ top tips to help you find time you didn't think you had and maximising the effectiveness of that time!

The Insurance Act is a defining moment for insurers not insurance brokers.

Certainly, insurance brokers will have to make changes to the way they operate but that is some way off.

January provides us with a great opportunity for reflecting on the previous year:

• What went well?
• What did we learn?
• What will we do differently in 2014?

A key part to this process will be our appraisal review, which is likely to include feedback. The amount and type of feedback will depend on how active you have sought this and any formal processes and systems your organisation has for seeking and collating feedback, such as, 360 degree reviews.

The related issues of the identification by some carriers of inadequate reserves, and consequent ratings downgrades (or the ongoing risk of these) have highlighted an old problem for many brokers; how, if they use as their base case a minimum rating level of ‘A-‘ (as many do) for their level of automatically accepting carrier security, should they react to a downgrade of a previously ‘A range’ carrier to the ‘BBB range’?

If you are talking your Chartered Insurance Institute exams here are 5 top tips which are likely to increase the success of your revision include:

Make a plan -  Identify realistically how much time you have available. If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of revision and the lack of time, here are some tips for finding a few  extra hours per week, without too much effort:

It is commonly argued that a major driver of the financial crisis was an over-reliance on ratings; that the blind acceptance of rating agency views by investors and bankers proved to be unhealthy.