Hi everyone. Welcome back! This month we're talking about how you actually
become a financial adviser. I've had quite a few people ask me about this so
I thought it'd be a good idea to show you my journey and how I became an
Independent Financial Adviser (IFA).
I actually joined an IFA firm back in 2014. Up until
that point I hadn't even heard of an IFA I had no idea what they were or what
they did but I took a position as an administrator at an Independent
Financial Adviser firm. It's a small firm, even now there's only seven of us
working there, but it's a really lovely place to work and I started as an
administrator but I knew when I started there was the potential to do my
training and to become an Independent Financial Adviser. So as I said when I
started I had no idea what that meant, what that entailed but I learned the
ropes quite quickly and I quite quickly found out that it was a job that
I was really interested in and I was really keen to further my knowledge and
do some qualifications and become an IFA. The firm were happy to fund the
qualifications. They can be quite expensive so I was really lucky that
they were going to do that for me and the route that I took was through the
Chartered Insurance Institute - the CII - and it was a series of exams called the
RO exams - six exams RO1 - RO6. The end result was that you could gain a
Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning, which is what I achieved. Now when I took
the exams you had to finish them within 30 months of passing the first exam. So
once you've passed the first exam you have two and a half years to complete
all the others. They give you that deadline I think to keep your knowledge
current and relevant. If you were to take you know three or four years to do your exams
then you probably wouldn't be as knowledgeable as condensing it down into
two and a half years so that's why they do it that way. I think now they've
actually changed the deadlines and I think they're a little bit more lenient
with how much time you have to complete your examinations so it's a little
bit more flexible if you need that flexibility. So all the exams I took
bar the last one - RO6 - all the others were multiple choice exams so it
involved a textbook and several months of studying on my own time and then a
multiple-choice exam where I had to go to a particular location and complete
it at that location. They were fair, I don't want to say fairly straightforward, but
they were tough to do. The way they were worded was quite challenging and the
Chartered Insurance Institute do love a double negative so it's important that
you read the questions more than once but I completed those within the time
frame and by August 2017 I had completed my Diploma.
All the time I was studying I was working full time and so that was quite
challenging to do but I did the studying all in my own time and it really helped
to actually work at the firm at the same time because I could learn on the
job actually practically what it entails and also I could ask the advisers I
worked with if I had any questions or needed any help with anything, so that was
really beneficial and definitely a route I would suggest if you can do it. Getting
in as an administrator and learning the basics is a great foundation to becoming
an Independent Financial Adviser. You learn the compliance and regulation
right from the word go and so that is with you from the very beginning. It also
helps create really good habits that you should continue to adhere to when you
become an IFA. When you pass your first exam - so RO1 is the exam I did first and
that is the most basic level for the CII exams - you almost have to have that for
almost any qualification that you do. Once you've passed that or once I'd passed
that I was allowed to advise as long as I was supervised and my boss was my
supervisor. Even today he still is technically my supervisor but every IFA
has a supervisor within their firm. He would sit in on my meetings with me and
just check that I was meeting certain requirements but also help me out
if I needed any help with anything and it was good for my knowledge and my
confidence as well, having someone in the meetings that I knew I could ask if
I needed help or someone I knew who could step in and help out if he
thought I needed it. I've been fully qualified since August
2017 and so no longer have direct supervision as such. You still have to
have files checked to make sure that you're meeting regulatory requirements
but any IFA will do that or should be doing that. I'm no longer supervised so
closely by my boss but he does still run file checks occasionally on my files as he
does with all the other advisers in the firm. Any IFA should really be having
their files compliance checked to make sure that they are adhering to
compliance and regulatory standards. It's just good practice and generally
everyone should do it. Since I qualified I have been passed a
certain number of clients from our existing client bank in the firm, so I've
taken them into my ongoing client bank and I service them on a regular basis, and
I also now deal with all new enquiries into the firm, so any new enquiries,
generally they would come straight to me unless that particular person has
asked to speak to a particular adviser. Maybe they've been referred to a
particular person in the firm by someone they know and that's absolutely fine but
generally if there's a new enquiry that would come through to me. Once qualified
you have to keep up with continuing professional development (CPD) requirements. As
part of the CII that means I have to complete at least 35 hours of continuing
professional development every year. That can come in the form of seminars,
webinars, meetings with product providers, anything that meets my learning
objectives and builds on my knowledge of the industry and of the products that
are out there. This is really important because the financial industry is
changing so rapidly, there are new products all the time that come out and
it's really important to keep up to date with them so that you can give your
clients the best and most up-to-date knowledge. If you do protection advice, so
if you advise on life insurance, income protection all that sort of thing,
there is a new directive that you have to do 15 hours of insurance CPD within
your 35 hours of general CPD, so that's another new requirement that's recently been
brought in. You have to do those 35 hours a year and you have to log them
in a certain way because every year you have to refresh a statement of professional
standing (SPS) with the CII and that tells them that you've adhered to the CPD
requirements, you've met certain requirements and certain ethics
and standards that they have and they review that and they'll sign you off
every year, but you have to keep that today annually otherwise you're not
allowed to continue advising. I've been fully advising now for about three years.
Since then I've also had a little girl, had a daughter as well, which has put
studying a bit on the back burner for me but I was always keen to
go back to studying and to further my knowledge and just build on my
my qualifications. So I've recently taken steps to start to become Chartered.
Beyond having a Diploma you can take further qualifications to become
Chartered and then beyond that if you do want to you can take further steps to
become a Fellow of the CII. These are all quite challenging areas,
obviously otherwise everyone would do them but I'm really keen to get
some further knowledge under my belt and just to really broaden my knowledge
within the industry. So I'm currently taking steps at the moment to become
Chartered although I do think that will take me a little bit longer than it did
to get my Diploma, especially with a little one running around . So I hope
that's been helpful just to let you know how I became in IFA and how my journey
started and how I got to where I am today. If you've got any questions please
let me know but otherwise like the video, subscribe to the channel and I'll
see you in the next video.