Advisory Skills in Financial Planning

In the past, most of the financial planners needed one skill to be “successful”, which is the ability to sell, and get clients and will be solely compensated by commissions, if the planner unable to keep finding new prospective clients to sell to soonest or later the income will quickly go to zero. However, as the need by the consumer has shifted, the key abilities are technical competency to give the right advice, and empathy skills to form and deepen the client relationship and the sales and business development will then comes later.

Learning Outcome

Participants will be able to:

1. Discover the differences and advantages of needs-based approach (advisory practice) against traditional product peddling approach.
2. Discover required foundations and mindset to conduct needs-based practice in delivery financial planning services.
3. Recognize common mistakes and dilemmas in conducting advisory practice.
4. Apply BIDDIT (Background-Identifying-Development Probes, Disclosure and Instruction Taking) method to conduct effective needs-based fact finding.
5. Apply robust approach method, the BID (Background-Identifying-Development) Probes, for investment, insurance and estate planning services.
6. Enhance presentation of fees disclosure and scope of services.
7. Apply professional instructions taking method to gather right information for preparing segmented financial plan and solutions.
8. Enhance quality of financial advice’s presentation with use of professionally drafted segmented plan.

Learning Outline

Facilitator

Profile of Mr. Gavin Teoh Hock Geh

Gavin Teoh is the Director of Advisory and Practice Management of Standard Financial Adviser Sdn. Bhd. (a.k.a. StandardFA) with his own practice office in Ara Damansara, Petaling Jaya. He joined StandardFA in January 2010. His practice has a dedicated team of financial planners serving niche clients in specific industries and professions. This allows his team to have a deeper understanding of the peculiarities and challenges of clients.

LICENSES

He is a Licensed Financial Planner with Securities Commission and Financial Adviser Representative with Bank Negara Malaysia. He is also registered with the Federation of Investment Managers Malaysia (FIMM) as a Corporate Unit Trust Adviser (CUTA) Representative and Corporate Private Retirement Scheme Adviser Representative.

QUALIFICATIONS

He became a Certified Financial Planner (CFP ^{CERT TM}) in October 2003 and an Islamic Financial Planner (IFPTM) in January 2010. Gavin graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Physics from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) with a final-year dissertation of an artificial intelligence (AI) application. Currently, he is pursuing his postgraduate studies in economics in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) with research in area related to health and generational economics.

BACKGROUND

Gavin embarked into the financial services industry at age 25 through Financial Planning Programme (FPP) set up by AIA Co. Ltd. with its training partner Arthur Anderson. His belief and family experience have inspired him to venture into the financial planning profession and excel in this area.

He was involved in estate planning and business risk management service since the beginning of his career. In 2005, he ventured into an outsourcing mortgage sales company and integrated financial services agency. Gavin started his fee based financial planning and investment advisory works since 2006 with CIMB Wealth Advisors (CWA) Financial Care Centre (FCC).

RECOGNITIONS

Early in his career in this field, Gavin was recognised by CIMB WA Financial Care Centre as the Top Financial Planner for writing the most financial plan and investment policy statement documents in 2007.

Gavin is the only and first Malaysian Licensed Financial Planner who has ever won an international financial planning award till today, he was awarded as the Winner of 2014 PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Awards – Asia Region and the First Runner-up of 2013 PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Awards – Asia Region. Concurrent with these remarkable international awards, he also won the awards of 2014 Best Practice and 2013 Best Practice in StandardFA.

He is a seasoned Elite Club adviser of StandardFA for his outstanding business performance in delivering financial advisory services. He was awarded the Top Risk Adviser of StandardFA in 2015.

CONTRIBUTIONS

With his great passion in financial planning practice, he was appointed as Treasurer of PJ Chapter of Financial Planning Association of Malaysia (FPAM) for the term 2003-2004. He served as one of the facilitators and committee members of Practice Development Work Group of FPAM to run the Financial Planning Practice Clinic and coaching program for members of FPAM in year 2010-2012. In 2015, he was engaged as a member of the sub-working committee with the focus to ‘Strengthen Professional Standard’ in Security Commission of Malaysia’s 3-Year Action Plan to develop and improve the financial planning industry in Malaysia. Currently, he serves as one of the Standards and Professional Review Committees for The Board of Certification and Standards (BOCS) of Financial Planning Association of Malaysia (FPAM).

Gavin sits on the adjudication panel of the Malaysian Financial Planner of The Year Award (MFPYA) and PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Awards. He is a trainer for professional development course of his strength in the subjects of advisory skills and writing quality financial plan as approved by Security Industry Development Corporation (SIDC), a learning and development arm of Security Commission of Malaysia.

With his recognitions and vast experience in financial services industry, Gavin’s advice is sought after by educational providers and industry players. He had been invited by Tunku Abdul Rahman University College as one of their practice instructors to give advice for industry research and training conducted by Japanese trainers for employees of Japanese insurance companies – Meiji Yasuda Life and Dai-Ichi Life 2015-2016.

He has been invited to be a panelist at various industry forums, such as the Annual Financial Planning Signature Conference 2016. He was also featured on the main page in the Personal Wealth section of The Edge Malaysia on January 18, 2016 edition with the article, “Playing Catch-Up”, where he spoke on the evolution of the financial planning industry. Gavin also wrote financial articles for several publishers, including Behavioral Finance articles in Money Compass and a monthly business financial advice column called ‘Towards Financial Serenity’ in MalaysiaSME newspaper for the business community. Presently, he is a Marketplace Guru in Bursa Marketplace website, writing articles related to behavioral economics and financial planning.

Besides his busy schedule in providing and managing his financial planning practice, he is an active committee member of Suvarnamitra, a non-profit organsiation in Petaling Jaya, in taking care welfare of elders.

PHILOSOPHY

He believes conventional practice of solely applying financial solutions and management do not help clients to achieve their goals in the most optimal situation. He develops behavioral finance advisory skill with psychological counselling to manage client’s expectation and able to give them psychological security as compared to conventional financial advisory practice. With his interest in economics, and accumulated trainings in science, engineering and artificial intelligence technology in the past, it helps him to have visionary planning alongside industrial and technological developments. He believes Financial Serenity is the new direction which offers more meaningful strategies toward our life goals in times of life and economic challenges in this era.

Terms & Conditions

• Registration is on a first-come-first-served basis, only 20 seats available.
• Participants need to sit in for both sessions in order to accumulate the points.
• Confirmation is subject to payment before the workshop.
• FPAM reserves the right to amend the program, speaker, date, venue, etc, without prior notice.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How long will each digital programme take?

Each digital programme is the equivalent of a day’s CE Workshop training for approximately 8 hours. With the lunch break in between, the digital programme will usually take place for 6 hours.

2. Can I attend only half sessions of the training?

Yes, you may. However, you will not be granted full points from respective parties.

3. Which forms of payment can I use?

We accept payment by credit card (VISA / MasterCard / AMERICAN EXPRESS / Discover), by FPX (Affin Bank, Alliance Bank, AmBank, Bank Islam, Bank Muamalat, Bank Rakyat, BSN, CIMB Clicks, Hong Leong Bank, HSBC Bank, KFH, Maybank2E, Maybank2U, OCBC Bank, Public Bank, RHB Bank, Standard Chartered, UOB Bank).

4. How secure is shopping? Is my data protected?

Your data will be handled confidentially and encrypted with SSL (Secure-Socket-Layer) secure server software. The encrypted information of your order, your name, address, credit card or bank details cannot be read by any third party. Credit card payments will also be verified through the 3D secure procedure.

5. Who should I contact if there is any transactional issue or problem purchasing any product / service?

Kindly drop a message below with the problem statement and we will get back to you as soon as possible.