In April - on my birthday, fortuitously - I successfully completed my Level 7 Financial Plan Case Study and obtained the results.
I received confirmation of my Certified Financial Planner application in May, although I didn’t update my post-nominal letters on LinkedIn until I received my certificate in July as I couldn’t quite believe it.
This marked the end of 200 hours of work and a five year journey for me.
I’m a Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and committee member of the Paraplanner Interest Group. I also hold the Accredited Paraplanner and Chartered Wealth Manager designations.
I obtained my Level 4 Diploma in Financial Planning with the Chartered Insurance Institute in 2018
The same year I joined Rathbones where all staff had a CISI membership. This led to me attending the CISI Paraplanner Conference in June 2019 where I met Dan Atkinson and Joanna Redmond and learned about it for the first time.
This was great timing as the CISI had just increased the requirements for members to become CFP, moving from a Level 6 qualification to Level 7.
At the end of 2022 there were 957 CFP professionals in the UK and I wanted to challenge myself and be at the top of my game by becoming one.
Obtaining the Level 7 qualification involves a case study and I found mine really interesting and they certainly felt like real life clients. You can read the case study in the box out, below.
The CISI recommends 200 hours for the Level 6 exam and a further 200 hours for the Level 7 case study.
My personal experience was that it easily took me in excess of 200 hours to complete my case study, the vast majority of which were spent working on the cashflow analysis in Excel. Manual cashflow in Excel is a steep learning curve, especially for the retirement planning and the income tax calculations. Here’s an example of the formula for personal allowance from my spreadsheet:
“=IF(T19>$V$11+(2*U19),0,IF(T19<$V$11,U19,U19-((T19-$V$11)/2)))”
For me I found coming into the office before work to concentrate on my case study 7am-9am during the week and Sundays for peace and quiet worked best. I’m much more of a morning person. To be honest life took a bit of a pause but for anyone going through it, this isn’t forever.
The last two weeks of my case study was a real crunch-time as I was not working, but again in the office six days (still off Saturdays to rest) to allow me to focus 100 per cent on what I had left to do.
Listening to music using headphones to drown out the general office background noise was beneficial, plus no distractions you might otherwise have from being in the house.
I liked Jackie Lockie’s course as it was structured and you could work your way through it at your own pace, with the ability to rewind or re-watch if you missed a bit. Especially important when you’re trying to watch/listen as well as building your cashflow.
