'Financial plans change when the numbers are crunched'

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. 

She also includes pre-course learning, an example report structure and timetable for you. 

So what did I learn from the process?

Financial plan changes once the numbers have been crunched. I had initial thoughts around estate planning and inheritance tax mitigation, but the plan evolved once I calculated their cash flow in later life, especially the impact of Peter dying before Megan due to the loss of his guaranteed income from an annuity.  

Personally it has given me a lot more confidence when tackling a new case and being able to query advisers on alternative solutions, however it is very much a collaborative effort. 

What advice would you give someone who is about to embark on the Level 7 case study?

Finish your spreadsheet first. It is very difficult to not get stuck into writing the actual financial plan, however you need to ensure your manual cashflow planning in Excel is finished first. Otherwise you will simply end up having to re-write parts of your report, taking longer and potentially missing elements. 

Have everything in your Excel spreadsheet. I copied and snipped all elements of the interview notes and fact find from my case study and put them in the same Excel spreadsheet so that I only had one document to refer to. 

This also allowed me to highlight elements and annotate with notes either to highlight areas to research or flag to cover in my assumptions. My spreadsheet ran to 31 tabs, although colour coding and having an index with hyperlinks does make it slightly easier to navigate.

Seek help and support. I had support from a former colleague, Graeme Dreghorn, who had recently been through it and my CISI mentor Michael Fairweather. Jackie Lockie for her course and helping build the cashflow in Excel was invaluable. Plus some one-on-one coaching from Cris Glascow as there were some areas I felt like I was going round in circles and what to do.  

It is difficult enough therefore I highly recommend seeking help from the CISI Accredited Training Partners such as Cris, Jackie and Steve Martin of the Financial Planning Training Academy.

Quadruple check everything. In the week before my submission I noticed an error in one of my spreadsheets where I had accidently included state pension benefits for Peter, but the scenario was him pre-deceasing his wife Megan. 

This may sound like a simple oversight, however you are focused on so many different elements and switching between multiple and very complex calculations in Excel.

Give yourself time to sense check as it could ultimately make the difference between success and deferred success.    

Don’t give up. I’ve spoken to at least one candidate and heard of others who after not being successful do not re-submit. I understand, however it is so much more difficult to come back to a brand new case study. The examiner provides detailed feedback after submissions one and two to offer you the best opportunity of success with your third submission being the final.

Finally, don’t make things too complicated. As the CISI’s ‘Top Tips from Assessors’ says: “Where possible keep it simple, otherwise you can tie yourself in knots.”

Steven McBurnie is a member of the wealth planning team at Wright, Johnson & MacKenzie