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- This topic has 1 reply, 2 voices, and was last updated 7 years ago by Ken Garrett.
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- December 4, 2016 at 11:28 pm #353858
Sir, this is the most advanced level we’ll face and just stating “Turnover has been falling since 20xx, in the latest year by 1.9%” for a financial analysis question wouldn’t earn a mark.
But this is somewhat what is done in question
“Evaluate the Financial performance of CAP” {CAP (Dec ’09) [question 18 in current BPP kit]}
and
Assess the performance of the divisons using financial data {Lincoln & Lincoln (Dec ’12) [question 70 in current BPP kit]}Any advice on how much we should write for such a question?
Also, I saw a webinar on P5 exam technique and the speaker said spend one third of your time planning, meaning 0.6 min per mark. I know I need to plan my answers well, so if I write concise 2-3 line answers per mark, is this gonna work or it’s a plan for failure??
December 5, 2016 at 9:03 am #353955“Turnover has been falling since 20xx, in the latest year by 1.9%” could earn some credit as it indicates that you have noticed a deterioration and quantified it. A fuller analysis might then try to work out why this happened eg shrinking market or increased competition.
The type of statement that is pointless is something like “Receivables days have increased. This is because customers are taking longer to pay.” The ‘explanation’ is pointless because that is what collection period measures. Proper analysis would suggest reasons for the change eg more exports.
Planning is always important and includes getting to know the scenario thoroughly. This does not mean that planning for each section of the question needs to be up front. So you could study the scenario, plan answer to part (a), write answer to (a), plan (b) etc.
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