Building your Business also Means Building your Credentials

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Build­ing your busi­ness also means build­ing your credentials

In today’s mar­ket envi­ron­ment, clients want an Advi­sor that is a true pro­fes­sional, some one who they can have con­fi­dence in and above all — trust!  Your level of edu­ca­tion directly con­veys that mes­sage of con­fi­dence and trust.

Noth­ing says that you are a ded­i­cated pro­fes­sional like a com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ing self improve­ment through education.

So, which des­ig­na­tion is right for you?

I am often asked by Advi­sors which des­ig­na­tion they should pur­sue and I always answer the same way — get a game plan.  Don’t think about just tak­ing a course here or there, think about what would make the most sense for you and your clien­tele and set out a 2 or 3 year plan.

If you are at an IIROC Mem­ber firm, I would rec­om­mend that you map out a route to work towards achiev­ing the FCSI des­ig­na­tion.  CSI Global (for­merly the Cana­dian Secu­ri­ties Insti­tute) is the go to place for many indus­try des­ig­na­tions.  It is well respected and its des­ig­na­tions are rec­og­nized by both indus­try and investors, so earn­ing a des­ig­na­tion from this place,  will help you get a job and get clients.

If you have already com­pleted courses and des­ig­na­tions from CSI Global, then I’d rec­om­mend you map out a route towards earn­ing the CFP des­ig­na­tion offered by the Finan­cial Plan­ners Stan­dards Coun­cil.  The CFP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process has under­gone a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion this past year, (I have a 1 page sum­mary, please email me if you would like to receive it), mak­ing it a bit more dif­fi­cult to achieve CFP certification.

The des­ig­na­tions men­tioned so far are the ones that are most directly pointed towards retail Invest­ment Advi­sors.  Of course there is always the Char­tered Finan­cial Ana­lyst des­ig­na­tion or CFA Char­ter as it is com­monly known.  In my opin­ion, the CFA pro­gram is more suited towards would be Invest­ment Ana­lysts and aspir­ing Port­fo­lio Man­agers.  How­ever, many retail Invest­ment Advi­sors earn the CFA Char­ter because it does bring instant cred­i­bil­ity and is rec­og­nized as a pre­mier finan­cial indus­try credential.

OK, so what do you do if you do not have an MBA, CFA or other indus­try credential?

To pro­pel your­self right to the head of the pack and really dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self,  I’d rec­om­mend look­ing into earn­ing a CMA or CGA Pro­fes­sional Account­ing des­ig­na­tion.  Both are well respected and bring cred­i­bil­ity on the same level or even higher than MBA, CFA or CFP.

So just like any other aspect of build­ing your busi­ness, build­ing your cre­den­tials requires a well thought out plan.

Com­ments and ques­tions are always welcome.

In my next arti­cle, I will dive into tech­niques you need to know to pass stan­dard­ized finan­cial indus­try examinations.

Best of luck with your studies!

Brian Y. Gor­don, CFA, CFP, CIM, MBA, FCSI, is the Direc­tor of Learn­ing at Exam Suc­cess (www​.exam​suc​cess​.ca), a lead­ing provider of finan­cial indus­try exam­i­na­tion prepa­ra­tion and invest­ment sales train­ing.  He can be reached at info@examsuccess.ca

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Tags: Canadian Securities Institute, Cfa Program, Cfp Certification, Cfp Designation, Charter, Chartered Financial Analyst, Clientele, Confidence, Credentials, Designations, Financial Planners Standards Council, Game Plan, Investment Advisors, Investment Analysts, Market Environment, Member Firm, Portfolio Managers, Retail Investment, S Market, Self Improvement
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You Missed a Great Conference!

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

The CIFPs 8^th National Con­fer­ence Review

By Marc Lam­on­tagne, CFP, R.F.P, FMA

This is my sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year attend­ing this con­fer­ence and once again the agenda was PACKED. Each day began about 7:30 am and typ­i­cally went to 6:00 pm, with din­ner start­ing pronto at 6:30. You clearly earn your CE cred­its and receive your money’s worth at this conference.

The agenda was a smor­gas­bord; enough to quench the thirst for nov­elty of 500 to 600 atten­dees. The high­light was undoubt­edly Her­mann F. Leinin­gen with RBC Global Asset Man­age­ment. Leinin­gen was very funny, and he man­aged to walk the audi­ence through sev­eral com­plex eco­nomic sce­nar­ios and sus­tain their interest!

Take away: Expect U.S. inter­est rates to stay low for at least the next nine months or until there is a jobs recov­ery, stocks are still trad­ing at the lower end of the band due to con­tin­ued global eco­nomic uncer­tainty, and the demand for oil from China and India has barely scratched the surface.

Like any con­fer­ence there were a few mutual fund com­pany “talk­ing heads,” although the more inter­est­ing mate­r­ial came from indus­try par­tic­i­pants such as Cary List, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Finan­cial Plan­ners Stan­dards Coun­cil. List pre­sented some of the find­ings of their recent con­sumer sur­vey on the ben­e­fits of finan­cial plan­ning. This is news that all CFP pro­fes­sion­als will want to share with their clients and prospects. Shawn Bray­man, Pres­i­dent of Plan­Plus, offered us an overview of the top aca­d­e­mic and indus­try research in the field of finan­cial plan­ning. How­ever, he had so many fas­ci­nat­ing papers to dis­cuss, it was unfor­tu­nate he had only an hour to cover his mate­r­ial.  And yours truly gave a short pre­sen­ta­tion on the recent 2010 Advi­sor Sur­vey Report, con­clud­ing that the deliv­ery of finan­cial advice is not that dif­fer­ent between fee and com­mis­sion models.

Susan Wol­burg Jenah, Pres­i­dent & CEO of IIROC, pro­vided an update on the Client Rela­tion­ship Model (CRM) pro­pos­als that will impose greater dis­clo­sure on the indus­try in order to increase investor pro­tec­tion. How­ever, the CRM has dragged on for so long and mor­phed so many times, it is hard to believe it will ever mate­ri­al­ize. Asked by an attendee how the devel­op­ments on com­pen­sa­tion in the U.K. and Aus­tralia might affect us here, Wol­burg Jenah said that IIROC was keep­ing a close eye on devel­op­ments that could poten­tially influ­ence com­pen­sa­tion mod­els in Canada, although it is prefer­able that indus­try par­tic­i­pants “vol­un­tar­ily” assess how to bet­ter align the inter­ests of clients and advisors.

The final day ended at noon, but the morn­ing still had sev­eral excel­lent speak­ers such as Dr. Dale Orr, Jamie Golombek, and Kevin O’Brien, who filled the morn­ing with great nuggets of wisdom.

Take away: Dr. Orr from Eco­nomic Insight pro­vided his short-term pre­dic­tions for Canada’s econ­omy: neg­li­gi­ble infla­tion, the dol­lar will trade close to par or maybe even higher if the price of oil increases, short-term rates will be higher in Canada than the U.S. (again putting upward pres­sure on our dol­lar), expect the Bank of Canada pol­icy rate to increase by 25 basis-points at every fixed announce­ment date for the next three years until it reaches the tar­get of 4% to 4.5%, and finally, don’t expect to see a bal­anced fed­eral bud­get until 2014–2015.

Jamie Golombek from CIBC Pri­vate Wealth Man­age­ment, who always stages a grand show, regaled the audi­ence with sto­ries of cre­ative bro­kers who sup­pos­edly found loop­holes in the TFSA con­tri­bu­tion rules. He also offered sev­eral use­ful tax strate­gies, updates, and sug­ges­tions on advis­ing your clients based on recent tax court decisions.

Take away: Advi­sors should be rec­om­mend­ing to almost every client that they top up their TFSA con­tri­bu­tion room prior to mak­ing RRSP contributions.

And finally, cer­ti­fied finan­cial plan­ner Kevin O’Brien from Kevin O’Brien & Asso­ciates told the audi­ence his some­times funny, some­times heart­felt story of man­ag­ing his parent’s messy estate before he became an advi­sor. It affected his cur­rent approach to estate plan­ning so much that he pub­lished his story for other advi­sors to read in Where There’s a Will….There’s a Way.

Over­all, it was an excel­lent con­fer­ence, and I would highly rec­om­mend attend­ing CIFP 2011 to be held in Ottawa from June 5 to 8. Media arti­cles from some of the pre­sen­ta­tions are avail­able on the CIFP website.

Fall Con­fer­ence Alert!

There are two first-rate con­fer­ences com­ing up in the fall that I will attend and rec­om­mend as well worth the investment.

The first is the IAFP Annual Sym­po­sium in Banff from Sep­tem­ber 23 to 25, 2010. This one is par­tic­u­larly enjoy­able; it is more sym­po­sium than con­fer­ence because it is anchored by a sin­gle finan­cial plan­ning case study. All speak­ers are required to ref­er­ence this case study in their pre­sen­ta­tions and are encour­aged to pub­lish papers from their spe­cialty per­spec­tive. This cer­tainly elim­i­nates the dis­ori­en­ta­tion one can some­times feel lis­ten­ing to mul­ti­ple talk­ing heads on sev­eral diverse sub­jects at other con­fer­ences. This year the case study is about a retir­ing busi­ness owner who also hap­pens to be a finan­cial plan­ner (is this a coin­ci­dence?). The sym­po­sium cul­mi­nates with a half-day dis­cus­sion on the case study by the 125+ attendees.

The sec­ond is the Knowl­edge Bureau’s (KB) Dis­tin­guished Advi­sor Con­fer­ence in Orlando from Novem­ber 14 to 17, 2010. Knowl­edge Bureau fac­ulty speak­ers such as Richard Croft and Doug Nel­son are top notch and KB Pres­i­dent Eve­lyn Jacks obvi­ously used her time wisely recruit­ing the likes of Don Stew­art, CEO Sun Life Finan­cial, while she was a fel­low mem­ber of the Fed­eral Task Force on Finan­cial Lit­er­acy. The other com­pelling rea­son to attend is this: each day ends at the utterly civ­i­lized time of 1:30 pm, giv­ing atten­dees ample time to enjoy the sun and nearby ameni­ties with col­leagues and family.

Marc Lam­on­tagne, CFP, R.F.P., FMA is a fee-based finan­cial plan­ner with Ryan Lam­on­tagne Inc., fee-model prac­tice man­age­ment trainer, and author of To Fee or Not to Fee II — How to design a fee finan­cial advi­sory prac­tice.  www​.tofee​ornot​tofee​.com

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