Approved IAR CE Courses

Join the DFI enforcement team for an inside look at the latest investment fraud and scams. Attendees will gain practical knowledge to help identify and respond to fraud affecting advisers and their clients.

Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) under IRC Section 1202 offers significant tax advantages to founders, investors, and advisors who understand how to navigate its requirements. Enhanced by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), these benefits can translate into meaningful tax savings, but only if specific qualifications are met. In this session, expert Lisa Fetherngill will explore the requirements to qualify for QSBS treatment, highlight potential pitfalls and nuances, and review both tax and non-tax advantages of QSBS status. Attendees will also discover advanced planning opportunities, including strategies to combine QSBS treatment with gifting and other techniques to maximize benefits for clients.

Financial professionals often cite 'fit' as the most important factor in maintaining long-term client relationships, but few take the time to formally assess investor personality. This course addresses that gap using the well-established NEO Five-Factor Model, a framework used by psychologists, HR professionals, and educators to predict behavior. Advisors who understand investor personality can guide clients with greater empathy, tailor communication more effectively, and reduce emotional decision-making triggers that lead to suboptimal outcomes.Unlike courses that touch lightly on risk tolerance or investor profiling, this class delivers a structured, scientifically grounded approach to personality assessment. It's designed for CFPs, CPAs, IARs, CIMAs, and other CE-seeking professionals who want to incorporate behavioral insights directly into planning workflows. You'll learn to recognize how key personality traits'such as conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness'manifest in investor behavior and what those traits mean for long-term portfolio guidance.

What if the best communication style and best onboarding practices for serving non-traditional clients are in fact the best practices for serving all clients? This panel will share evidence from their research and practices that illustrate how to improve various elements of client service for maximum engagement. Whether you have identified a niche to serve or you want to serve the broadest population possible, the research and examples that will be shared should elevate the level of your success. Some of the newest research from the Love and Money Center and decades of practice refinements will be presented.

Concentrated stock positions can expose clients to significant portfolio risk while creating complex tax and liquidity issues. However, addressing these concerns can be challenging when tax implications, behavioral biases, and emotional attachments can make clients reluctant to diversify. In this webinar, John Nersesian, CFP, CIMA, CPWA, examines the risks associated with concentrated equity holdings and strategies such as staged sales, hedging, variable prepaid forwards, exchange funds, tax-loss harvesting, and charitable planning that can address different client objectives. In the webinar, John also explores specialized planning opportunities involving equity compensation and employer stock, including 83(b) elections and Net Unrealized Appreciation (NUA). Throughout the presentation, John emphasizes selecting and combining strategies based on each client's objectives rather than treating diversification as a one-size-fits-all solution, ensuring that clients can both address their concentrated stock positions and feel supported by their advisor in determining the best way to do that.

Financial advisors often work with clients who are nearing or in retirement, and healthcare is one of the most pressing concerns for people as they approach retirement age and beyond. But although it's important to make sure the numbers all add up and that clients have the resources to pay for healthcare costs throughout their retirement, what's even more important (but often forgotten) is that they - and the people who might become responsible for caring for them - are aligned on their healthcare goals, so they can maintain their desired quality of life even when health issues arise.Join Carolyn McClanahan, founder of Life Planning Partners, at the October Kitces Monthly Webinar, where she will discuss the real-life challenges faced by planners and their clients around meeting healthcare needs in retirement, including pre-planning before a medical event occurs to ensure the client's goals are communicated with and supported by family and health care providers, deciding who will provide care (be it family members, friends, or professional help) and how they will be paid, and learning what government assistance programs may be available to help with the cost of care.

Transitioning from making and saving money to spending one’s life savings is a vulnerable period for clients that often centers on a major underlying goal: ensuring the assets last through the remainder of their lives. Researchers and practitioners have found several techniques to meet this goal, but they all have tradeoffs. In this webinar, Amy Arnott of Morningstar reviews the evolution of retirement income planning and examines how flexible withdrawal strategies can improve retirement outcomes compared to the traditional 4% rule. She explains the strengths and weaknesses of fixed real withdrawal approaches, emphasizing that retirees’ spending patterns typically change over time and that market conditions materially affect sustainable withdrawal rates.
Throughout the presentation, eight flexible spending methods are compared, including guardrails, RMD-based withdrawals, constant percentage spending, and endowment approaches, highlighting the trade-offs between higher lifetime spending, cash flow stability, and leaving a legacy. Arnott also discusses the importance of incorporating Social Security timing, non-portfolio income, inflation risk, and spending shocks into retirement planning decisions.