Learning to Produce a Financial Plan: Student Perceptions of Integrating Knowledge and Skills

Tertiary education can play an essential role in ensuring that financial planners are professionally equipped to develop strategies and solutions that holistically address a client’s circumstances and needs. Survey findings of undergraduate university students in this study reveal differing perceptions of learning the high-level skill of developing strategies and solutions within the process of Personal Financial Planning (PFP). Such differences are found to be associated with demographic groupings of age, gender, first language, home country and work experience. The findings suggest that financial planning programs offered by higher education institutions need to be designed to promote and assess deep learning through cohesive curriculum, practical modelling and work experience opportunities. The study also suggests that there is a need for additional research into the relationship between student perceptions and student performance in assessment tasks requiring students to produce a financial plan.