Approved IAR CE Courses

An IAR's foremost ethical duty is to act as a fiduciary for your clients and nowhere is this moreevidenced than when helping individuals, sometimes decades in advance, determine how they will spend their days after a lifetime of working. What Clients Need to Know: Partnering for Retirement Planning is designed to equip investment adviser representatives with an ethical framework and the strategic judgment necessary to guide clients towards a secure retirement. This course explores theprinciples of fiduciary responsibility, conflict of interest management, transparent communication, and describes the many products available for you to build your clients' futures. Your knowledge of your client and the products available matched with your education of your client on their choicesand needs is the crux of determining a sound and suitable financial plan. By the end of this course, you will understand how to navigate the complex landscape of retirement planning with the highestethical standards, ensuring that client interests are always at the front of your advisory services.

This course, led by Bob Keebler, CPA, will focus on the intergenerational transfer of property and will focus on what CPAs should know about trusts and estates. It will cover many topics rangingfrom fundamental legal principles of trusts and estates to how language in the trust instrumentaccomplishes a particular tax result.Bob will also discuss the legal definitions and principles of estates and trusts, the basic principles regarding property ownership, and the types of trusts commonly used. Bob will also delve into trust accounting fundamentals and the specific clauses thatare important to understand, including formula valuation clauses.

In recent years, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been especially active in updating 'old' regulatory rules to modernize them, leading to an ongoing wave of compliance changes for financial advisors. And the regulators don't appear to be done yet, which means financial advisors may want to start preparing now for what could come next! In this session, we will discuss the regulatory (and legislative) developments that are emerging in Washington, which may affect financial planners such as the proposed changes to the Custody Rule, potential new Cybersecurity regulation, new rules on oversight of vendors when Outsourcing, and more.

This session is a practical, on-the-ground compliance update for investment advisers who need to know not just what the rules say, but where the SEC is focusing its attention and what that means for how they run their firms. Compliance attorney Chris Stanley walks through the current state of Reg S-P and what written incident response programs need to look like in practice, common custody triggers and how to comply with the custody rule’s requirements, where SEC examiners are spending their time and what they want to see, and how advisors should think about the SEC’s recordkeeping rule in the context of modern technology.

In this session, advisors will gain critical insights into the evolving regulatory landscape impacting investment advisers. Compliance expert, Max Schatzow, will explore FinCEN’s final rule expanding the definition of “financial institution” under the Bank Secrecy Act, along with new AML/CFT reporting requirements. Attendees will learn about recent amendments to Regulation S-P, which mandate written incident response programs and enhanced oversight of service providers. The session also covers current SEC examination priorities, equipping advisors with practical strategies to maintain compliance in an increasingly complex regulatory environment.[

What do you do when you suspect an aging client is being financially exploited, often by a friend or family member taking advantage of them? Two regulatory tools exist specifically to help you act: the trusted contact framework and temporary disbursement hold authority. But many advisors either don't know these tools exist, don't understand the conditions under which they can be used, or are so uncertain about the rules that they default to doing nothing (to avoid accidentally breaching client privacy) while allowing a client's assets to remain at risk.

Join Amy as she takes a deep dive into these two specific provisions of NASAA's Model Act to Protect Vulnerable Adults from Financial Exploitation: what they actually say, what they allow, what they require, and why regulators created them in the first place. Using real case scenarios, attendees will work through exactly how to apply these tools in practice: when a trusted contact can be reached out to and for what purpose, what triggers the authority to place a temporary hold on a disbursement, what documentation must accompany that hold, and what happens next. 

Many financial planners encounter clients with equity compensation, but fewer have a framework for clients who hold four grant types at once. This session delivers a practical, 201-level coordination framework for managing RSUs, ISOs, NQSOs, and an ESPP as an integrated portfolio rather than four separate planning problems. Attendees work through a real client case study, apply a grant sequencing model, and leave with an actionable tool they can use with clients. Suitable for advisors who already understand equity comp basics and those seeking to learn more, this session goes deep on cross-grant strategy, concentration risk, and AMT credit recovery.

This month, we review December blog articles. This quiz includes the following articles: When Does A Financial Coach Need To Register As An Investment Adviser? The 'ABCS' Test To Determine Status and AI-Generated Financial Advice And The Fiduciary Catch-22.

In this continuing education session, learners will review 2 Nerd’s Eye View blog articles: Why (Most) Advisors Shouldn’t Serve As Clients’ Trustees: Ethical Conflicts, Dual Fiduciary Duties, And The SEC Custody Rule and Why The SEC May No Longer Allow “Hedge Clauses” In Client Advisory Agreements (And How To Replace Them Compliantly).

In the first article, Ben Henry-Moreland examines why financial advisors should generally avoid serving as trustees for their clients' trusts due to conflicts of interest, competing fiduciary obligations, regulatory custody requirements, and potential legal liability. It also explores the circumstances under which advisors may choose to offer professional trustee services, as well as the infrastructure, compliance procedures, and risk-management practices required to do so successfully.

In the second article, Isaac Mamaysky explains why the SEC has intensified its scrutiny of hedge clauses in Investment Management Agreements (IMAs), arguing that such provisions may mislead clients and conflict with an adviser’s fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act. It outlines recent enforcement actions, provides guidance for identifying problematic hedge-clause language, and offers compliant alternatives that limit liability by clearly defining the scope of the advisory relationship rather than attempting to waive client rights.