Financial Planning Students Win CIFP National Case Competition Championship
Every year, the Canadian Institute of Financial Planning (CFIP) hosts a Case Competition Team Challenge event inviting all post-secondary institutions across Canada that teach Financial Planning to compete in teams of three.
In the past, teams would assemble in various cities to compete in the Eastern and Western divisions. The winning teams in each division would then compete against each other for the National Championship at the CIFP's annual Financial Planners Conference generally held in a large Canadian city in late May or early June. This year, due to COVID-19, the competition was held virtually on March 27th and gave organizers an opportunity to invite teams from across Canada to one event.
This was the eighth year the competition had been hosted by the CIFP. Each year Humber has entered between one to two teams of students from the Financial Planning graduate certificate program. This year, Financial Planning students Keiran Wozniak, Nadhira Soud and Harmeet Kaur Garg represented Humber College and competed in the event. Viral Patel acted as an alternate but was not required to compete.
Each team was provided with a detailed Financial Planning case and then sequestered for two and a half hours with their fellow team members and financial calculator. The teams were then asked to solve the case and propose recommendations for the customers in the case relating to the six planks of a financial plan including Financial Management, Retirement Planning, Investment Planning, Risk and Insurance Planning, Tax Planning and Estate Planning. Lastly, the teams were required to create a 15 - 20 minute presentation explaining their recommendations to a panel of judges who scored their work.
Coach Steve Bang was permitted to watch the Humber team's presentation and believed that they made some excellent recommendations regarding the case and did great job in addressing the important areas of a financial plan.
Every week for five weeks, prior to the event, the Humber team met virtually for four to five hours in order to analyze practise cases and present their recommendations. All of their hard work soon paid off as the Humber team finished first in the competition and brought home the National Championship for the first time since the competition began.
The participating team members recieved a set of Beats headphones, a $1,000 CIFP gift certificate and an all-expense-paid trip to the CIFP National Conference in Ottawa in November to be recognized for their victory on stage and presented with a glass trophy. The trophy will be displayed at Humber College Lakeshore Campus.
Coach Bang is very proud of the team and would like to thank them for all their hard work and dedication.
Keiran Wozniak
Nadhira Soud
Harmeet Kaur Garg
Viral Patel