So, you have decided to be part of the world’s largest anti-fraud organization and premier provider of anti-fraud training and education. Together with nearly 85,000 members, the ACFE is reducing business fraud worldwide and inspiring public confidence in the integrity and objectivity within the profession.
“CERTIFIED FRAUD EXAM IS NOT A TOUGH COURSE TO STUDY OR EVEN PASS.”
Well above is the widely distributed quoted by ACFE. But, before you embark on this journey, please be clear about your own goals. CFE is not a difficult course to study or even pass if you follow the given below tips. This purely based on the people’s experiences and opinion that CFE is definitely a good credential to have if you are involved in Risk Management professional like an auditor, compliance officer, risk manager. However, it is not going to boost your career immediately, maybe in long run as the fraud examiner profession is in a growing phase and there is not a quite demand for this profession right now. In spite of this, there is a good scope for this course in the near future as big scams, financial frauds, embezzlement is always in news headline in the everyday newspaper.
Congratulations, to you for selecting this interesting credential. We hope this degree will help you to progress in your career immensely. CFE is not a tough course, however, you could avoid some mistakes so that you could clear this course in flying colors. This is an online exam that you can take anywhere at your convenience. It might be confusing for someone who has never done this before, so it is better to be clear on some aspects like how to prepare when to submit documents, pay fees and how to attempt the exam.
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Timeline
It is better if you decide when you are planning to take an exam like within 1 month, 3 months a year before attempting an exam. If you are planning to give the exam within 1 month, then pay your exam fee and submit your documents before 1 month, because ACFE will take some time to review these documents. You need to pay $400 for an exam or $300 if you have already bought a prep course. We have found some people waited 1 month for preparing for the exam, after which they submitted payment and documents and they had to wait for an extra one month time to take the exam.
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Buy CFE Exam Prep course
We have good news and bad news for you. The good news is if you buy a Prep Course you don’t need to go through all 2000 pages long Fraud Examiner Manual. After you have bought prep course you will also receive fraud examiner manual in .pdf version without any cost. Oh, yes, you can use only the Fraud Examiner Manual to prepare for the exam. Fraud Examiner Manual is very long and it has covered lots of thing. You can learn a great deal from it. However, it depends on how long you are going to prepare for the CFE exam, if it is 3 months to 1 year then, you can definitely opt for this option. However, if you want to complete this course within 1 month time, then please buy the CFE Exam Prep Course. The downside of this is that this prep course is expensive. It costs about $800. You may have a question that the CFE Exam Prep course will just help me to pass, what about learning about ideas and concepts. Well you are right but if you are from accounting or risk management background, you would have been familiar with these topics already so it will just repetition only.
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Using CFE Exam Prep Course
There are various ways to use the prep course. One individual might want to review all the questions and answer in the prep course. Then, they revisit the question that they have marked for review or answered incorrectly.
Another technique maybe is to copy every question/keywords and answer from a prep course into a word file. This method is preferable for some technical sections like Law. There are actually 4 sections: Financial Transaction and Fraud Schemes, Law, Fraud Prevention and Deterrence, and, Investigation for which you have to take the exam separately. When you apply this technique, then you will have an overall overview of the section. You can connect the dots, that is you will able to know how one question is related to another. This will help to clarify the concepts. So, how about testing yourself, for preparedness for the CFE exam. Download our Mobile App here, it will test you with exam similar questions and provide you with an explanation for the wrong answer. Also, it comes with a lot of other useful features to help you in the journey of acing the CFE exam.
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Money-back pass guarantee
As per ACFE, you need to fulfill the following conditions in order to qualify for a money-back pass guarantee:
- You must complete the CFE Exam Prep Course within one year from the purchase date.
- You must take the CFE Exam within 90 days of completing the CFE Exam Prep Course. Your completion date is recorded automatically by the software on the day of the last completed section.
- You must correctly answer all questions in the CFE Exam Prep Course database at least once. If you incorrectly answer a question, it will return to the question pool and you will be asked the question again at a future time.
- Your score must be above 85% for each module as per ACFE. If you request your exam activation key before completing the CFE Exam Prep Course, you waive your Money Back Pass Guarantee.
- Should you waive your Money Back Pass Guarantee and wish to earn 35 credits of CPE for completing the CFE Exam Prep Course, you will need to answer all questions correctly at least once and score at least an 85 percent on each practice exam section.
Therefore, please make sure you qualify for this Money-Back Pass Guarantee before attempting the exam so that you will save $25 while taking the exam. But not to worry, CFE is not difficult to pass, if your score is above 80%, you can easily pass the exam in flying colors. Also, there is a checklist in the prep course which will automatically tell you whether you are qualified for Money Back Pass Guarantee or not.
Know About Different Fraud Scams: Old Ones and New Ones !!!
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Scan through Fraud Examiners Manual.
After you have reached the review phase, it is highly recommended that you scan through fraud examiner manual once. You don’t need to go into detail, just skim and scan. The benefit is that you are already familiar with most of the concepts, so, when you go through the examiner manual, you will understand how those concepts are linked with one another. Your goal should not be only to pass the exam but to learn the core fundamentals provided by this certification.
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Exam Technique
The 2 hours is quite long for 100 questions. In our experience, individuals who have prepared adequately can finish the exam within half an hour. Every question is, given 75 sec and if you are not able to answer the question at that time, the question will be locked and it will be treated as unanswered. So, time is the essence. Further, sometimes the answer is at first multiple answers so you don’t need to go through all answer choices. Again, it is recommended to understand both question and answer, reading out loud will help you to speed up this process. You must score at least 75 percent correct on each section of the CFE Exam.You will receive notification of your exam results via email within 3-5 business days that is either you have passed or failed.
7. One Interesting Note
It is rightly said,’ How much you can learn from TV’. So, if the theory bores you, you may want to watch episodes of American Greed. These TV shows give you the different types of incidents of fraud like wire fraud, real estate scam, get-rich-quick scam, elderly fraud, health fraud, identity theft. The TV shows are presented in the documentary-style showing how the perpetrator started scam, how they become successful, how were they caught. So you can learn about different aspects of Certified Fraud Examiner with these TV shows.
Ready to Test Your Fraud Examiner Skills? Play This Puzzle Game.
8. Affidavits
After you have completed the exam, you have to submit the affidavit which is a kind of self-declaration that you have completed the exam on your own and you have not created by using any materials or taken help from anyone. It needs to be signed by you and a witness that may be your colleague or senior. However, it does not mean that your colleague or senior must be acting as an invigilator while you are taking the exam. After the exam, you can ask them to fill the affidavit for you. Also make sure the date in an affidavit should not be prior to taking the exam and also you need to submit only one affidavit for the whole exam of whole sections, not four affidavits for each section.
9. AND one Last Thing:
It is usually trending, people who go for Certified Fraud Exam also want to Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist Exam. If you are already in the Financial Sector, you may know that there is a growing demand for Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing Experts. Therefore, adding this extra certification along with CFE can boost your career immensely. Why don’t you go to this article here to give it a second thought?
This is all to this exam. If you have any queries, please let us know. Also, best of luck to those who are attempting this exam.
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