April 22, 2011
Our organization has prepared financial services professionals for over a decade for the Certified Financial Planner CFP tm credential. The CFP tm coursework is comprised of five core courses, i.e., Investment Planning, Tax Planning, Retirement and Employee Benefits Planning, Insurance and Risk Management and Estate Planning. Because of the difficulties of the exam and the expense associated with preparing for same, we have attempted over the years to try and make our training efforts more efficient and effective.
Our training has also dealt with the issue of the background diversity of the individuals preparing for and taking the CFP tm exam. Our client base stretches from the finance and investment neophyte to the financial services professional with years of experience. In our class preparation and presentation then, we have had to struggle with the objective of engaging the entire class. We believe that the same demographic exists with the broad base of what we would call the average investor.
We believe then that a great deal of training leverage, and cost savings, may be exerted through training efforts within the aegis of the employer organization. Employee teams of four individuals are created in an investment club format that we refer to as VERITAS tm or Voluntary Employee Retirement, Investment and Tax Training Associations, with at least one individual serving in the capacity of financial expert from a broad, generalist standpoint. As financial training can become tedious, such training takes place in a competitive environment, where topic presentations followed by focused breakout sessions are reinforced through competitive, timed, team testing.
Finally, the training itself must be additive or cumulative in its scope, beginning with a basic understanding of how the investment world operates. Core issues are the corporate form, the income statement and balance sheet, the various types of investments, etc. An important point in investment decision-making is to ensure that the assumptions that one makes in making an investment decision are valid. The employee-team approach helps to disabuse individuals of invalid assumptions that they make in re investment practices and products.