Approved IAR CE Courses

Certain financial professionals are classified as "fiduciaries" and must uphold the standard of doing what is best for their clients. This course examines the standards of fiduciary duty, as well as the fiduciary's professional and ethical responsibilities to employers and the investing public.

Ethical decision-making is at the core of effective investment advisory practice. Investment Adviser Representatives regularly encounter situations involving fiduciary responsibilities, conflicts of interest, client communications, and vulnerable client protection while balancing professional judgment, regulatory expectations, and client needs.

This course provides a practical framework for applying ethical principles throughout the advisory relationship. Participants will explore fiduciary duty, the duty of care and loyalty, conflict identification and mitigation, disclosure practices, ethical communications, advertising considerations, documentation standards, and approaches for addressing capacity concerns and financial exploitation. Through practical examples and real-world scenarios, the program emphasizes how ethical principles can be applied consistently when facts are incomplete, business pressures exist, or competing interests arise.

This course constructs an ethical model for financial service professionals based upon government legislation and self-regulatory and regulatory practices. The content includes an introduction to ethical theory, ethics within the securities industry, and current ethical issues in the marketplace. The course concludes with a review of common ethical traps and techniques for avoidance.

Financial professionals who decide to work with seniors will find this unique market both challenging and rewarding. This course provides a broad overview of the unique social, familial, physical, and cognitive issues seniors face that may affect their financial decisions. It offers practical guidance that financial professionals can use to communicate effectively with seniors, to ensure suitable product recommendations, and to protect themselves from potential liability when working in this sector.

As clients age, the language we use to discuss financial matters with them is important. Our fiduciary responsibility, always important, may include additional roles, as necessitated byage or family situation. As trusted advisors, understanding the unique social, familial,physical, and cognitive issues seniors face will help in guiding their financial decision-making.The Senior Safe Act, a consumer protection law passed in 2018, requires advisors to report any exploitation of seniors and exempts advisors of any liability, provided the advisor hashad the proper training. This course is designed to provide you with the proper training, to include practical guidance for communication that ensures suitable guidance and product recommendations for the senior client, especially those with diminished cognitive capacity. You will also learn steps you can use to ethically serve seniors and protect yourself. And you will be educated on the regulators' (Finra and SEC) stance on serving seniors.

This course examines the ethical decisions that investment advisers must make when executing trades for their customers, including the need to monitor the trades and investments being make in their representative's personal account to be able to address and conflicts of interest as well as preventing the use of material, non-public information. The manner in which trades are executed will be examined, with attention on algorithmic and high frequency trading, long-term versus short-term trading, and copy trading. The course will also stress the importance of acting in the best interest of clients when it comes to selecting the broker-dealer through which the firm will execute trades and how trades are allocated among client accounts.

CFP Board's Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct course reflects the commitment that all CFP' professionals make to high standards of competency and ethics. CFP Board's Code and Standards benefits and protects the public, provides standards for delivering financial planning, and advances financial planning as a distinct and valuable profession. A CFP' professional must complete this Ethics course every two years to help ensure that they understand the requirement to:1. Act with honesty, integrity, competence, and diligence.2. Act in the client's best interests.3. Exercise due care.4. Avoid or disclose and manage conflicts of interest.5. Maintain the confidentiality and protect the privacy of client information.6. Act in a manner that reflects positively on the financial planning profession and CFP' certification.

This program fulfills the requirement for CFP Board approved Ethics CE. This program is designed to educate CFP® professionals on CFP Board's new Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct, which is effective July 1, 2024.