5 Key Areas of Continuing Education for Financial Advisors: Courses to Differentiate Your Practice

Whether you’re looking for continuing education for SHRM, CPE, CFP, etc., or the right resources to serve clients and stay competitive, advisors must continuously grow their knowledge. Here are six of the top continuing education categories for financial advisors, and sample courses from October Three’s Retirement Learning Center to help you stay up to date.

1. Practice Growth and Advisor Skills

As an advisor, your biggest advantage is your relationship with your clients. We round out our list with courses to optimize practice structure, differentiation, and brand.

Sample courses include:

• Unlocking the Power of Successful Events

• Practical and Tactical Actions for Small Business Owners

• Understanding Your Retirement DNA

2. Retirement Plan Design and Structure

Designing, structuring, and qualifying retirement plans for businesses, including plan type, plan docs, plan features, and tax/qualification issues. Right now is the golden age of small business. These courses provide insights into advanced retirement strategies, which can augment business-owner tax strategies and are appealing to high-income individuals by allowing them to save more and improve their quality of life in retirement.

Sample courses include:

• Cash Balance Plans: An Alternative for Small Businesses

• Pension-Link Emergency Savings Accounts: Opportunities & Challenges

• Taking Plan Design to New Heights

3. Legislative and Regulatory Changes

Recent legal changes, compliance rules, regulations, and the legal environment affecting retirement plans. Beyond keeping your practice up to date regarding compliance, courses like these can provide niche knowledge based on your location or specific audience to help differentiate your practice.

Sample courses include:

• SECURE 2.0: Reshaping the Retirement Landscape

• Washington Pulse: Practical and Tactical Actions for Plan Sponsors

• Student Loan Matching: Considerations and Opportunities

• State-Sponsored Retirement Plans: An Overview

4. Compliance and Risk

Fiduciary responsibilities, governance, compliance, risk management, and plan oversight. Courses like these are excellent for advisors supporting plan sponsors in risk management, improved governance, and practice differentiation.

Sample courses include:

• Fiduciary Best Practices for Plan Sponsors

• The 408(g) Fiduciary Advisor: Rationale and Implementation

• Navigating the New Rollover Reality

• Investment Policy Considerations (IPS) for Today’s DC Plans

• Cybersecurity for Retirement Plans

5. Retirement and Health-Benefit Education

Individual retirement planning, benefits, and health-related information, such as Social Security and Medicare. Unlike our retirement plan design resources, these courses focus more on how advisors can deliver hands-on support for a broad range of issues and concerns for participants and retirees.

Sample courses include:

• Social Security and You

• Medicare: Understanding and Navigating the Planning Process

• Roth Employer Contributions: More Ways to Roth

Supporting Continuing Education for Top Designations

Continuing education helps financial advisors enhance their technical expertise and empowers them to grow their practices. October Three’s Retirement Learning Center provides continuing education training and resources for a variety of designations, including SHRM, CPE, CFP, CIMA, CPWA, CIMC, and RMA.

Click here to see our full course list. Or, if you’d like to take one of the courses on our list, contact us by filling out this form or giving us a call at (877) 275-7521.