Fixed income...whats the norm..annual or semi annual when nothing is mentioned?

CFA Level I
#1

In a question where its not mentioned specifically that bond payment is annual or semi annual…does one take it as semi annual or annual to be the norm? Consider a 10 year, 5 percent bond priced at 1028 . What is the YTM? Here in the answer N is taken as 20 and pmt as 25 all the while supposing that its semi annual…why??

#2

I’ve never confronted that kinda problem in 2000+ questions I did and I doubt that in exam it could be left unmentioned frequency of payments. So I think there is no reason to worry about that.

#3

Go with semi-annual if it’s not given

#4

Thanks…

#5

In fact it’s mentioned at many places that by default it is semi annual and for accounting standard it’s always IFRS.