Financial Planning Standards

This blog post has been moved to our new blog. The new link is http://blog.investwise.ie/199/

David Quinn, MD of Investwise, received final results this morning from the prestigious Graduate Diploma in Financial Planning, graduating with a First Class Honours grade.

This level 9 (Masters level) course is run by the UCD School of Professional Finance. The course is directed at those who aim for higher standards of advice and ethics in personal financial planning. The course ran for 3 Semesters and focused on Investment theory, Taxation, Risk management and Behavioural analysis. This is the first course of its kind in Ireland to focus on very high quality independent financial advice. Graduates are  clearly motivated by high ethical standards and can offer clients a much deeper understanding of investment markets and a more comprehensive personal financial planning service.

Regular personal finance columnist Charlie Weston,  wrote a brief article in the Indo on Wednesday which really cuts to the point about financial advice offered by the Banks.

In summary, he questions the wisdom of getting financial planning advice from your local bank manager, who has a conflict of interest between giving good advice and selling their products. Click here for the full article.

We have just issued the latest of our quarterly newsletters. Click Here to see the online copy.

I'm attending an Irish  / Australian exchange conference in Croke Park tomorrow. 300 Australian Financial Planners are here for the week as part of their offshore conference and 45 Irish financial planners have been invited to join them to share ideas and experience.  It will be really interesting to see how they do things 'down under', and whether they have the same financial concerns that we have?

This exchange is part of a new initiative, called the Financial Planning Standards Board (www.fpsb.ie) which is a body established to encourage and develop excellence and high ethical standards in financial planning and financial advice. I am working towards the internationally recognised CFP qualification and full membership of the FPSB. I am part of the first group of advisors to try for this qualification and I hope to be one of the first CFP advisors in Ireland.

If I pass all the exams, I should have the designation by this time next year. This conference is all part of that process.