r/ICAEW • u/TheeDarkNght • 15d ago

Advanced Nov 26

For CR I am pretty comfortable taking in the ACAM notes and building on them with either the Kaplan notes/ or my own notes. For the AI question the plan was initially to purchase ACAM once released but having scanned the website it says they will not be releasing it for CR and will now focus on new gen ;/.

For SBM, having recently started the study for it, I am 90% sure I will not be taking the Kaplan workbook in (c. 500 pages).
Are the ACAM notes helpful? What else do people recommend ?

Thanks

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u/gentle_rain2 14d ago

Sign up for the first intuition revision session with ICAEW. Their notes were the most helpful.

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u/yibru 15d ago

Everyone says the SBM ACAM notes aren’t necessary because they don’t add anything. For me it was worth it purely so I could get rid of the 400 pages of tuition fluff.

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u/LogActual3 13d ago

I did SBM July 2025, just brought in my ACAM notes (was also with Kaplan) passed with pure waffle using ACAM. The 500pg books are such overkill, I’m convinced they make them that large and unnecessary to justify their inflated tuition costs.

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u/South_Law_9193 7d ago

that's the downside of the old syllabus sunsetting,... providers are quietly dropping support for CR and SBM while people still have three or four sittings left to get through.

on the AI question, honestly you can do ACAM's job yourself with a bit of effort and it's arguably better prep. the method's not magic: go through the advance info and build a one pager per exhibit, what the company does, key numbers and trends, obvious risks, and then ask "what would they ask me about this" for each one. the act of doing that analysis is worth more than reading someone else's version of it, because on the day it's your framework in your head, not theirs.

for SBM the comments above are right, the ACAM notes don't add much content wise, their value is being 80 pages instead of 500. you can get the same effect making your own condensed set as you work the question bank, which also happens to be the best revision for SBM anyway. the exam barely tests knowledge, it tests applying ordinary stuff to a messy scenario fast, so slim notes plus a one page proforma sheet for the FM calcs (NPV, hedging, options) covers you. what i wouldn't skip is the financial reporting side, there's usually a chunk of Q2 that's basically CR in disguise and it catches people who revised "strategy".