Approved IAR CE Courses

This interactive course examines the ethical foundations of Motivational Interviewing (MI) and its application in financial planning conversations. Through the lens of fiduciary responsibility, participants will explore how the MI spirit (partnership, acceptance, compassion, evocation) supports client autonomy and decision-making. The course addresses the ethical risks of unintentional directive communication and advisor overreach, offering practical strategies for aligning advice with a clients value and readiness. Through self-paced lessons, structured reflection, and a live Q&A session, advisors will learn how ethical communication can lead to deeper trust, greater clarity, and more meaningful outcomes.

This course provides a general overview of the importance and ethics of choice architecture, whichdescribes how the presentation of choices can guide prudent decisions without manipulative tactics. The course begins by comparing behavioral finance with the efficient markets hypothesis and contrasting their views of investors and market movements. Next, the course defines behavioral finance concepts such as anchoring, prospect theory, and loss aversion bias. The course then provides a discussion of how to ethically frame data to clarify complex information without undulyinfluencing decision making. Then the course presents specific examples of framing techniques, such as positive versus negative framing, certain versus uncertain framing, and attribute versus goal framing. The course explores how the sequence of choices impacts perception and its ethical implementation in financial presentations. Then the course explains the importance of decision fatigue and how to mitigate its impact on clients. Finally, the course concludes with case studiesillustrating how to create personalized financial presentations that clarify and elucidate complex information for diverse clients while ethically guiding them to prudent investment goals.

This course examines what fiduciary duty requires when investment adviser
representatives use artificial intelligence. It grounds enrollees in how the
major tool categories actually work — large language models, meeting
notetakers, robo-advisory algorithms, and predictive analytics — and then
examines each through the duties of care and loyalty, covering confidentiality
when client data enters an AI system, reliance on output that may be
fabricated or stale, conflicts embedded in optimization targets, honesty about
AI capabilities, and the supervision and recordkeeping that make AI use
answerable.

Every module pairs the technical mechanics with the ethical analysis, and the
course is built on the premise that technology changes how advice is produced
but not what the client is owed. It is written for advisers who already work
with AI tools, deliberately or otherwise, and who carry personal
responsibility for advice those tools help produce.

This course examines the professional ethics of prospecting for customers. This includes communicating with clients and prospects who are experiencing cognitive disabilities. The course begins by broadly discussing the ethical obligations an IAR has to their clients including presenting a balanced view of products and services, client confidentiality, disclosure, and avoidance of conflicts of interest, skilled performance of their services, full disclosure of material information, andthe additional obligations necessitated by their fiduciary duty. The course continues to outline the duties an IAR has to their employer, such as careful solicitation, full disclosure, and proper accounting of funds. Unethical and prohibited activities are highlighted, including churning, incomplete disclosure, and misrepresentation; concluding with suggestions for avoiding the most common misleading terms. Ethical considerations regarding recommendations to replace products and services are analyzed. Next, the course focuses on ethical concerns surrounding serving clients and prospects experiencing cognitive impairments. Topics include gathering information, making recommendations, and implementing strategies. CONTINUED ON LAST PAGE

Over time, IRAs have become extremely important for many Americans saving for retirement. This Review thecourse will review the history of retirement accounts in the U.S., starting with the Social Security Actand defined-benefit plans, and finishing with the Employee Retirement Income Securities Act of 1974 (ERISA). The rules for fiduciaries and custodians that were established in ERISA will be examined, followed by an explanation of fiduciary and suitablity rules for invesment advisers and broker-dealers. The course will conclude with a review the tax rules for inherited IRAs.

This course covers complex products and the concerns regulators have about them. The course begins by broadly defining complex products, and describing several types, including structured products, principal protected notes, market-linked CDs, leveraged and inverse ETFs, publicnon-listed REITs, variable annuities, alternative mutual funds, and private placements. The course also describes the risks of these complex products and the responsibilities of brokers and IARs with respect to recommending them to investors.

The course for CFP and CPA financial planning professionals focuses on equipping fiduciaries with essential skills to evaluate, justify, and manage life insurance policies under best-interest regulations. Participants learn about cost-transparency, policy illustrations, and diversification strategies, ensuring recommendations align with fiduciary standards like those outlined by FINRA and the Uniform Prudent Investor Act. The class also emphasizes leveraging independent research tools like Veralytic and using stochastic modeling to assess long-term policy viability. This ensures practitioners can confidently navigate the complex life insurance landscape, protecting client interests and complying with evolving industry regulations.

You only get one chance to make a great first impression, and research shows that your clients’ experience in the first 100 days determines the longevity of their professional relationship with you. Libby will walk us through the 3 components that create a next-level onboarding process and how to implement it in your practice immediately so that you can turn prospects into clients and clients into referral-generating machines.
Once you get this formula down, your referrals will skyrocket, your communication issues will evaporate and your clients will confirm that their onboarding experience set you apart from any other financial professionals they had ever worked with. And, it’s easier than you think.

We will hear from three thought leaders in the market strategy, investment insights, and research. This session gives each panelist time to provide their framework and insights on the global market and economy. Through their presentations and time for question & answer, the session is intended to educate financial professionals on developments within the markets and how it affects various investments and asset classes and their client portfolios. Their ideas shared will help to present information through charts and graphs, helping advisors address the markets and the economy to support their efforts to help clients make sound investment decisions.

This course offers a deeper understanding of the present state of securities regulation by exploringthe historical evolution and context of our dual state and federal regulatory system. Conceptsand terminology are presented for a broad range of legislative and regulatory developments.The course covers the emergence of blue sky laws, the formation of NASAA, the advent offederal securities laws, NASAA model rules and legislation, and the events that prompted thesedevelopments. The evolving relationship between state and federal regulators is discussed.The origin and purpose of FINRA, SIPC, and national securities exchanges are also covered.The course concludes by identifying some recent developments and future trends in securitiesregulation.