Professional Qualifications

To provide financial advice all advisers must be qualified to a basic level, this is called Certificate in Financial Planning. It is important that your adviser has these exams and is registered with the FSA. While the basic qualifications are important you may find you receive higher quality advice from a specialist adviser, especially if that adviser has taken and passed further qualifications. While qualifications are not a guarantee of an adviser’s ability it is a good indication of their professionalism and standards. We hope the guide below helps explain how our industries qualifications work.

Level 1 – Non-advised Financial Planning. This is when you select your own financial product based on information provided by a financial adviser, insurance company or bank. A good example of this is when you select a deposit or current account at a bank. This is not suitable for the more complex transactions or those that have significant pension funds or estates. Unfortunately many consumers feel that they have been advised when in fact they have made all the decisions themselves.

Level 2 – Certificate in Financial planning. This is the basic level and used to be the standard level of qualifications. However as financial planning has become more complex and diverse those at this level are being encouraged to take further exams. We encourage our support staff to take and sit these exams to better assist our clients and to allow then to become the advisers of the futures, but for retirement advice further qualifications is essential.

Level 3 – Diploma in Financial planning. This is the level of qualification we expect from our advisers. We firmly believe that this is the level that our clients deserve and expect from a professional financial adviser. Currently, only a minority of authorised financial advisers have this level of qualification. The FSA is pushing the financial services industry hard to make this a standard qualification level for all advisers providing advice on more complex financial products such as Pensions, Income Drawdown and Inheritance Tax Planning.

Level 4 – Advanced Diploma in Financial Planning and Chartered Financial Planner. This is a new level of qualification and has only recently been introduced by the Chartered Insurance Institute. Our advisers are working towards this level to make sure they remain the most qualified individuals in the industry. This is a significant commitment and takes a number of years to complete.

Please feel free to discuss qualification levels with any of our staff, they will happily explain their level of qualifications to you.