A new “financial services practitioner” program will be launched at Seneca College in Toronto in September. After it’s up and running, Seneca plans to offer its curriculum to other colleges across Canada.

The two-semester course, which runs eight months, is designed to make students self-sufficient in finance to the point where they can set up their own advisory practices, earning life insurance and mutual funds licences in the process.

The FSP program will serve two needs, says Sam Albanese, a 32-year industry veteran, founder of the program and insurance industry director at Seneca’s Centre for Financial Services.

“It will bring new blood into the industry,” he says. “The average age of financial advisors is 52. There is a looming labour shortage. The public is not going to be well-served if there aren’t enough of us around to serve clients.”

A stream of new advisors will also allow aging advisors to develop succession plans, says Albanese. “Many advisors have built very nice practices but, as they get older, they won’t want to work as much, and they’ll need someone to take over.”

John Whaley, executive director, Independent Financial Brokers of Canada, agrees with Albanese. “Our members are starting to ask: ‘Who can I sell my business to?’ or ‘How can I pass it on?’ They may even have sons or daughters who are interested,” he says.

The problem for advisors, Whaley notes, is finding the time to train new people. “And sometimes they don’t know how to train them.”

The FSP program will help fill the training vacuum, which has largely been created by the industry’s shift away from the captive-agent system. Many existing advisors came up under the system and were trained by their employers.

Since Albanese began work on launching the new program a year-and-a-half ago, he has gathered support from several insurance companies, such as Transamerica Life Canada, Equitable Life of Canada, Desjardins, Standard Life Canada, Manulife Financial and AIG Life of Canada.

The FSP also has the support of “an extensive list” of managing general agents,” says Albanese. He says several mutual fund companies that have also expressed interest in becoming sponsors.

The program also has the support of two key advisor organizations: Advocis and the IFBC. Advocis has provided materials for the FSP curriculum, says Albanese, who recently spoke at a session on succession planning at Advocis’s annual conference in Victoria. Previously, he spoke at the IFB’s spring summit in Toronto.

The program will be broken into two 14-week semesters. Each will include a practical work-experience component. During the first seven weeks, students will work toward earning their life insurance licences.

“They will learn about insurance products: life, UL [universal life], term and living benefits,” says Albanese. Students will also learn to use product illustration and presentation software, and learn about the taxation of insurance products.

After earning their life licences, students will spend three days a week in the classroom and two days in a co-op setting. Some may have a workplace to go to, such as a parent’s firm. Others will be placed, says Albanese. “There is no shortage of interested MGAs and branches.”

In the latter half of the first term, the program will shift to learning “crucial” soft skills: prospecting, sales and marketing. There will be role-playing and practice sessions.

The second term will focus on mutual funds and financial-planning skills. Students will learn about various fund products and work toward their mutual fund licences.

Again, in the second half of the semester, students will do a co-op component while learning softer skills: developing a needs analysis and investment strategies for retirement and estate planning.

There will be exams at different points in the program, but the key evaluation will be based on developing a business plan.

“We are setting students up to be in business for themselves. We want them to know what to do, how to run a business,” says Albanese. “It’s virtually a guarantee that they will be able to succeed.”

Tuition for the course will be about $4,000. Add the cost of textbooks, a Toshiba laptop provided at cost, and software, and the price for the full program comes in at about $7,000. (Statistics Canada says undergraduate students paid an average of $4,214 in tuition fees for the 2005/06 academic year.)

Graduates will get regular practice updates from their respective colleges, such as changes to the Income Tax Act. The updates will probably be done by e-mail alerts directing alumni to the program’s Web site, now being designed.

@page_break@As of mid-June, eight students had signed up for September course. The goal is have a class of 25 to 30 students, with a new class starting every September and December. IE