Providing Financial Advice

Providing Financial Advice

• Employed and working within the financial advice sector
• Visited regularly in your workplace by a Babington assessor
• Working towards the ifs CeMAP

These qualifications are focused on the practical skills and knowledge that an employee will need to be a successful financial advisor.

QUALIFICATION STRUCTURE – EDEXCEL AWARD IN PROVIDING FINANCIAL ADVICE
To achieve the Level 3 Award you must complete THREE units including the 2 mandatory units:

Mandatory Units (2 Units)

Unit 1
Gathering information needed to provide financial advice

Unit 2
Analysing information necessary to provide financial advice

The optional unit for Financial Advice is:

Unit 3
Advise on Retail Investment solutions

Key skills in:

• Application of Number
• Communication

These 2 units comprise of a small portfolio of evidence and 2 externally marked tests. You will receive 2 separate certificates for these. If you have recently completed your GCSEs you may find that you are exempt from some or all of the key skills.

TECHNICAL CERTIFICATE
This is usually the CII Certificate in Financial Planning (CFP) which consists of five modules:

• UK Financial Services, Regulation and Ethics
• Investment and Risk
• Financial Protection
• Retirement Planning
• Integrated Financial Planning

It is usual to complete some or all of these modules prior to commencing work as a Financial Adviser.

There are a total of 8 hours of examinations. The first four are examined electronically, via multiple choice questions, with results given immediately. The last module requires two written case studies.

What is involved?

On a first visit to an employer we would explain how an Apprenticeship framework functions and what the pros and cons were.

If it were agreed that we would proceed we would make an appointment to return to initially assess the potential apprentice, to check that the job role has sufficient breadth and depth to allow completion of the NVQ standards, to carry out a health and safety check (a requirement in order to access government funding), to talk to the supervisor or manager and to the potential apprentice in order to gauge their commitment to the programme and to formally sign up both the broker and the apprentice. This list can readily be broken into two, or more, visits.

A candidate would then be visited approximately four weekly by their assessor. A visit would typically last about 1½ hours, of which perhaps 30 minutes would be spent with the assessor observing normal work, but the other hour would be ‘down time’ spent, ideally, away from the desk reviewing progress towards the CFP and the key skills and planning activities for before and at the next visit.