Go to www.CISI.org/cfp to register your interest, check your eligibility and find out what exams and assessments you need to sit. You will then be given information about how to start the process by the professional body that runs the qualifications, CISI. They will also allow you to purchase your Level 7 case study once you are eligible. Case studies are released by CISI once per quarter. Once you have purchased that, we recommend booking a course.

We recommend doing our new Mastering Financial Planning skills development course. It runs monthly. See the pricing or our courses pages for more information.

We recommend that everyone goes on a course. This is because there is so much information for you to take in, more than can be imparted in a 30-minute 1:2:1 session. It works out to me significantly more cost-effective for you to do that.  We do not offer 30-minute 1:2:1 coaching for those who have not been on one of our courses or made at least one previous financial plan assessment submission. Please go to our pricing page or courses page to see the differences between the types of course on offer.

That depends on your learning preferences and how much time you can set aside. All the content is the same but there are different numbers of individual 1:2:1s and the structure is different.

Supported Learning Course is set over eight weeks and designed for those working full-time and fitting the level 7 assessment in around their day job in evenings and weekends. That comes with two 1:2:1s

Guided Fast Track is for those who want a concentrated timeframe as it runs over one week where the spreadsheets are created. Then it is expected that you will spend up to a further 80 hours in your own time to finish your submission. That comes with five 1:2:1s.

Also see our pricing page for the highlights of the differences.

You have ten weeks from the date the CISI send it to you to create and submit a comprehensive financial plan that meets all the assessment criteria.

Yes. To pass you need to obtain at least 51% in each learning outcome AND an aggregate score overall of at least 65%.

You have a total of three submission attempts with the same case study to pass. Then you will need to buy a new case study from CISI and start afresh. For more information on how it all works, please read the articles on the Journal page of the website.

It helps you address the specific issues where you failed your financial plan case study submission. We will challenge your thinking and help you keep calm and focused. We help you clarify your thoughts on areas of the submission where additional work is needed so that you can be more confident in resubmitting.

No. The financial plan must be 100% your own work. We can, however, challenge the way you think, your approach and use our extensive practical experience in CFP assessing and training to give you practical guidance on areas to change sources of information to update any gaps in your technical knowledge. We can also ask you questions about where your plan failed and help you organise what needs to be actioned to fix those issues. We can help you stay on track by holding you to account and be a positive sounding board and support along the way.

No. It is all online using Zoom. We record all our sessions, and we will send you the link to each meeting once the meeting has ended. You can then use this to refresh your memory and remind yourself of what you agreed to do.

Our scheme is designed based on international research and broken down into 12 categories and set with timescales. It is designed to give a new entrant, whether a graduate or not, a clear pathway to become a Certified Financial PlannerTM. Our emphasis is on personal and financial planning skills development, getting organised along with specific team build skills, ethics and software knowledge and technical product and investment knowledge. It is extremely comprehensive.

You can use the version that you buy for as long as you like, making up to ten copies. There will be annual updates to ensure we capture changing business practices, new exams and soft skills training courses and continually improve it. We will contact you each year and you will be given the option to pay a one-off fee to update the scheme you hold. There is no obligation for you to do so and what you have you can build on yourself if you prefer.

Yes, but only limited amounts. We can offer some specific training such as CFP and Mastering Your Financial Planning skills training but most of it is collated by us from across the profession and beyond in order to build the overarching structure of the scheme. The scheme has timescales and descriptions of what the new entrant is expected to do and what the firm and team members are required to do to support them.

The scheme has been designed for you to run in-house, but depending on the size of your firm, we appreciate that you may not always have the time or resources to do everything. Yes, we provide assistance as required on a pre-agreed hourly basis.

Great. We can't wait to hear from you. Please go to our Pricing page on the website and book a free 30-minute consultation by selecting the type of meeting you would like. 

We believe that we can all benefit from the experience of others. We want to build a bigger and better financial planning profession. Others gave up their time to do just that and we believe in doing a similar thing. Obviously, we have a business to run, but we can play our part in providing some free information via our Journal page. This includes articles, podcasts and videos.

Sign up for our regular newsletter. That will give you all the information about what’s going on, what’s coming up and signpost you to where you can find more information.