Frequently Asked Questions

You can study and become a Certified Financial Planner professional, the only international Financial Planning Designation.  It proves application of your knowledge in creating a comprehensive financial plan for a given client.  It is assessed against the UK and international standards to meet the global requirements.  You will then join over 200,000 CFP professionals in 27 countries.

Go to www.CISI.org/cfp to register your interest, check your eligibility and find out what exams and assessments you need to sit.

We offer various courses which include group check-in sessions and individual 1:2:1 coaching sessions.

We also offer stand alone individual 1:2:1 coaching sessions.

Please see the CFP Resources page of our website for full details.

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.  Go to our CFP Resources page to find out more about what we have done to help people in a similar situation to you.

Coaching is charged on an half-hourly or hourly basis.  Please see our Get in Touch page for more information about what you receive, the costs and to book a session.

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.

Go to our Get in Touch page and use the calendar system to select either 30 or 60 minutes session you required, follow the links to choose a time convenient for you and pay.

You will be sent a confirmation after booking.  A second reminder email will be sent 48 hours prior to the meeting you booked.  All bookings must be amended or cancelled at least 24 hours before the time set otherwise you will not be able to obtain a refund.  The reminder will allow you to amend the booking to an alternative date and time, or obtain a refund.  Please see our Terms and Conditions page for more information.

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 Planner^TM.  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 as many copies as you need for your firm.  There will be annual updates to ensure we capture changing business practices, new exams and soft skills training courses.  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.

No.  We can offer some specific training such as Great Client Questions and Financial Planning 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 Get in Touch page on the website and contact us.

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.

Lockie Consultants does not give financial advice to members of the public.  If you are seeking financial advice in the UK please go to: https://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/wayfinder