End of course

Congratulations for completing the Financial Mentor Introductory Course. This is the first stage of becoming a financial mentor.

Next Steps:

Checking

After checking that you have completed all your assignments and any revisions needed. Your tutor will contact you and your supervisor at your service via email to let you know about the assessment process.

Assessment Preparation

You can practice and prepare for your assessment with your supervisor.

Here is a preparation pack that you can download with all the information about the assessment as well as a practice scenario.

Module 12 – V2.0 – Trainee assessment – Overview

Assessment

Your tutor will run the assessment. There are two parts to the assessment and it can take between two and four hours depending on how quickly you work through the material.

Part one – oral questions. This is from the research questions that you downloaded at the end of module nine.

The oral questions must be completed prior to the assessment day.

You may ask for assistance from your manager or supervisor, but you are expected to complete each question yourself.

On the assessment day you will be asked to orally present answers to three randomly selected questions. You will be asked to hand-in your answers to all 10 questions.

Notes on answering the oral questions:

  • answers do not need to show specific details (e.g. benefit rates) but need to show what you need to think about, consider or research to help resolve the client’s problem.
  • each question will be given a mark out of five – a mark of three, four or five is a pass , a mark of one or two is a fail. You are expected to achieve a pass in each question.

Part two – Case Study

This part of the assessment is a case study and will be conducted in a mock budget office with you as a trainee financial mentor.  You will have two problems to solve

Problem 1:

  • observe a role play between a client and a financial mentor
  • take notes and if needed ask any questions needed to clarify the information provided
  • draft a budget and a debt schedule and make some suggestions about modifying the client’s budget, you do not need to modify the budget.

Problem 2:

  • Once you have presented your answer to problem 1 you will be given a revised budget worksheet to use for the next problem to complete a cashflow
  • calculations are required for the first six weeks of the cashflow, income and expense numbers must be entered for the 12 weeks.

Notes on answering the case study:

  • a time estimate is provided of how long you should spend trying to answer each problem, however there is no time limit set for these problems. When you are ready to move on to the next problem, you should let an assessor know
  • the assessor will do a ‘gross check’ of the case study answers and if there is a significant error you will be given the opportunity to make corrections
  • this is an ‘open book’ assessment so you may refer to your notes when completing the case study.

You then submit all your work via email. Your tutor will mark and complete a report, letting you, your manager and FinCap know the results.

Theory Certification

After a successful completion of FMIC programme and assessment FinCap issues a certificate of completion.

Provisional Period

You are now ready to start your provisional period with your service. This part of the programme is where you practice and imbed all the skills and strategies you have learnt while working with clients. This is worth 10 credits of the micro-credential and 100 hours of work.

After a successful completion of your provisional period you complete a report reflecting on and evaluating your skills. Your Supervisor also completes a report attesting to your skill level. Your manager then requests FinCap to recognise you as a financial mentor.

Provisional Period Certification

When FinCap receives and processes both reports and the request from your manager FinCap issues a certificate of achievement and we celebrate with you for becoming a financial mentor.