Centre for PEACE

In FP, we have the following 2 courses to help Financial Planning Professionals build credibility and trust:

• The Certified Financial Planner (CFP^®) is our flagship course. The CFP^® certification mark is an internationally recognised professional certification often regarded as the “gold standard” of the financial planning industry. This certification mark also attained the IBF Advanced Standards (IBFA) recognition accorded by the IBF. FP is the pioneer Education Provider of this certification in Singapore since 1999 and to date, we are the market leaders in this segment and have trained more than 15,000 AFP^CM/AWP^CM and CFP^® candidates by our team of experienced lecturers who are also industry practitioners. In 2018, we also incorporated e-learning and reverse-classroom learning techniques in our course delivery and developed our own e-learning content for teaching to supplement classroom tutorials.
• In 2018, we launched “Head Start with Holistic Financial Planning, IBFQ”, which is an entry-level, hands-on program specially designed to integrate into the “90-days training program” of Financial Advisers for newly contracted Representatives. Aspirants looking to join the Financial Services Industry will find this program useful, as they will be equipped with client-facing practical skills and knowledge and apply them using our proprietary practice management system, CREDIBILITY^TM. Industry veterans looking to implement a systematic approach to transform their practice and move away from product-peddling will find this course useful as well. Upon successful completion of this program, candidates will also be eligible to apply to the IBF for the “IBF Qualified” (IBFQ) certification, and candidates who successfully completed this course will also be able the use the certification mark, CREDIBILITY^TM.

Often, our alumnus who completed the CFP^® certification program with us come back to us with the question, “I’m finally a CFP^® Professional now… so what’s next for my career development?”

To address our alumnus lifelong learning and development needs, we regularly conduct market training needs analysis and designed Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses to equip and empower industry professionals with specialist knowledge and skills, such as:

• Certificate in Advising Small and Family Businesses (Cert. ASFB)
• Certificate in Retirement Adequacy Planning (Cert. REAP)
• Master Fund Advisor (MFA)
• Holistic Estate and Legacy Planning (HELP) Professional
• Associate REIT Investment Advisor (ARIA)
• Personal Financial Analysis Techniques for Client Acquisition and Retention (FATCAR)
• Wealth Management for Wealthy Clients (WMWC)
• Chartered Mortgage Analyst (ChMA) and Accredited Mortgage Planner (AMP)
• E-Learning course for Ethics, Rules & Regulations

These courses are supported by IBF-FTS funding and SkillsFuture Credit. We will continue to introduce new courses that will help financial planning professionals remain relevant and competent to serve their clients in the highest level of standard and competency.

Beyond technical knowledge and financial theories, we also teach practitioners soft skills competency and frameworks to engage and empower their clients. Our training methodology focuses on holistic learning and client engagement concepts and frameworks are taught in all our courses. We run the following courses to develop soft skills client-engagement competency:

• The Psychology of Selling is a soft-skills program based on modern sales techniques to equip practitioners with an understanding of how to “edutain” (educate and entertain), engage and connect with their prospects and clients to support their consultative practice. Sales is nothing more than a call to action; it is not a “dirty word” that practitioners should be ashamed of. In this workshop, we equip practitioners with the needed skills and competency to reframe the way they do business, and remove their psychological barrier to sales, while increase their success rate with their prospects and clients
• The Art of Story Selling focuses on building engagement frameworks to simplify technical aspects of financial planning so that they can connect better with prospective clients and be more effective in communicating the need to take action.
• Objections Handling Not by the Book equips practitioners with the understanding of the basis of common “textbook objections” and how to avoid them. Often, objections by prospective clients are a by-product of product peddling, and this workshop focuses on helping practitioners reframe the product-peddling model into a needs-based proposition creation framework to eliminate objections before they can be brought up.

At FP, we believe that professionalism and ethics should be the cornerstone of every financial planning professional because they build trust and credibility among clients which results in business growth.

Under the MAS Notice FAA-N13, on Minimum Entry and Examination Requirements for Representatives of Licensed Financial Advisers and Exempt Financial Advisers, financial planning professionals are required to undergo a mandatory 6-hours of Ethics and Rules and Regulations training every year.

At FP, we provide e-learning courses at competitive prices to equip professionals with ethics and rules and regulations that will also fulfil the stipulated requirements under the FAA-N13, deployed on our e-learning portal.

At FP, we are also mindful that prospecting is the lifeblood of any business, and the financial advisory business is no exception. To enable practitioners to be more effective in lead generation and prospecting, we have the following courses:

• The SECRET to Integrated Selling is a workshop that teach financial planning professionals how to use the “SECRET” framework to integrate sales and marketing into one single holistic activity. Using this framework, practitioners will be able to create their own client engagement content to educate, entertain, empower and encourage their prospects and clients to take action, and “sell without selling”. This workshop is the theme for “Kickoff 2017” and has been conducted at various FIs and Agency Groups.
• Success through Social Media Marketing and Seminars equips financial planning professionals to use social media and seminars as a long-term and sustainable marketing and prospecting strategy to “draw prospects in” instead of going out to “push to them”. In this workshop, Financial planning professionals will learn how to organise a successful seminar event, structure and effectively deliver engaging seminar content through the frameworks that we teach. This workshop is the theme for “Kickoff 2018” and has been conducted at various FIs and Agency Groups.
• Share the Experience Please (STEP) is a workshop focused on equipping financial planning professionals how to get recommendations from their clients, instead of referrals. The difference between recommendations and referrals is that the latter is usually just a list of names with their contact number, but recommendations are personal endorsements by their clients about their financial planner, and the client takes the initiative to recommend someone he knows to his trusted financial planning professional. This workshop is the theme for “Kickoff 2019” and has been conducted at various FIs and Agency Groups.
• Segmentation and Targeting for Effective Positioning and Propositions (STEPP) is a workshop that equips financial planning professionals with the ability to segmentise and target their market and to create a personal marketing plan and brand mantra for their business. This workshop is the theme for “Kickoff 2020” and has been conducted at various FIs and Agency Groups.

We want to help financial planning professionals be successful in their business. And we believe that this begins with the empowerment of the client with the right financial planning knowledge to take decisive and long-term commitment to achieve their financial objectives. Therefore, at FP, we are also actively involved in financial literacy through consumer workshops and seminars, such as “Hacking your CPF for a Secure Retirement“, “Bake Your Retirement Cake“, “How to Invest Safely and Profitably“, “How to R.I.P and not R.I.P“, “Understanding Wills, Trusts, LPA, and AMD“, “Millionaire Mentality Workshop“, “Know Your Numbers”, “D.I.Y Financial Health Check“, etc.

We aim to empower consumers with financial planning knowledge and help them take control and ownership of the financial planning process, and learn how to work with their financial planners as their trusted advisors. At the same time, we also equip financial planners with the competency to engage consumers more effectively – this pull-push strategy is the reason for many of the courses we run.

Ultimately, we hope to bridge the knowledge gap between the consumers and planners. We want to remove the stigma that consumers have about financial planning professionals – that they are “commissions-driven” and will do anything to earn the commission at their expense. By doing so, we hope that the overall professional standards and competency of financial planning professionals can be raised to the level that consumers expect, and in so doing, gain the credibility, trust and business opportunities they hope to achieve.