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.
