PlanPlus Inc. Monday announced the launch of the PlanPlus Global Planning Awards, a global competition to showcase the value of financial planning.
There will be three awards winners, one for the Americas, Europe and Asia. Winners of the competition will receive an expense paid trip to FPA Experience in Orlando in October.
“We are excited to be here at the CIFPs Conference in Niagara Falls to introduce this new award program”, said Shawn Brayman, President & CEO of Lindsay, Ont.-based PlanPlus.
“This is the largest gathering of financial planners in Canada and we feel the work that is carried out by true financial planners and associations like CIFPs needs to be better appreciated. FPA Experience in the United States is the annual conference for CIFPs’ sister organization there that has acted as the global gathering place for financial planners. FPA has members from over 50 countries and usually attendees from 20 to 30 of them at their conference.”
The competition will include submissions to a panel of five judges for each region that will be reduced to two finalists for each region. These finalists will need to then present the financial plan that must be based on a real case to the judges so a winner can be selected. As an example, judges for the “Americas” award are from Canada, the U.S. and South America whereas “Europe” has judges from Germany, Netherland, Hungary and the United Kingdom.
“A challenging aspect of this has been dealing with how we manage language differences”, said John Page from PlanPlus, who will manage the competition and act as one of the judges for all three regions. “Initial submissions must be in English and will be provided to the judges on an anonymous basis, but the finalists will be providing the plan and doing a presentation to the judging panel in the language of their choice.”
To find out more about the competition go to www.planplus.com/globalawards.
PlanPlus develops software for use by financial institutions, professional advisors and consumers. Its software is being used in over 30 countries and in several languages.