Financial Coach Practitioner Certificate Training

Financial coaching is a blend of generic advice, mentoring and pure coaching.

Being good with money is just another form of fitness. Just as with losing weight or getting physically fit, it takes the same sort of commitment to get on top of your finances and remain motivated so that you reach your goals and overcome the obstacles in the way.

Financial coaches use proven coaching techniques and technical expertise to help clients identify and understand their financial goals, and put in place realistic and measurable strategies to meet them.

People seek financial coaching for many different reasons. Some require information and only minimal guidance. For instance, to discuss whether the plans a client has in place are sufficient to meet their future goals.

Others may want considerable support facing up to financial difficulties, which often involves examining the emotions surrounding their relationship with money. For example, tackling a long-term issue, such as out-of-control spending habits, or working through money worries and anxieties. 

Our Financial Coach Practitioner Certificate Training attracts people from all kinds of backgrounds, not just financial planners or advisers. Only about 25% to 30% of the people coming on the training have a financial advisory background. 

Some are coaches or therapists. Others are accountants, bookkeepers or people with experience working in the finance industry in areas such as marketing. Others are money bloggers, say, or simply have a keen interest and passion in personal finance without necessarily any qualifications or work experience - for instance, the go-to-person amongst their friends and family when it comes to dealing with questions around money. Or have a coaching background and interest in specialising in this area.

Having a financial services background gives people the confidence to deal with any financial matter that comes up with a client, but is not absolutely required depending on the service you plan to offer. Without the experience of working with individuals on this topic, your role as a financial coach will be less as an expert and more as a coach - helping clients find solutions for themselves.

If you don't come from a financial services background, we would encourage you to attend our Personal Finance Seminar Series. This course is delivered live online over three 90-minute sessions, held on Zoom. It's run by Dr George Callaghan, an Economist at the Open University teaching in the area of Personal Finance, and takes place in the 3 weeks leading up to the start of the Financial Coach Practitioner Certificate Training.

Topics have been selected to help you prepare for the Practitioner Certificate Training, and for future work with clients thereafter. This course also serves as a stand alone training for those wanting to learn about finance topics or prepare for a future training.

We've created a competency checklist we share in each of the courses, which identifies all the key topics which require knowledge, skills or experience that may come up in a coaching session to help you assess your skills and identify any additional training needs. 

Many go onto to create their own Financial Coaching practices. While others integrate it into their existing practice.

Here's a sample of websites from some of the people who've trained with us:

• http://www.arrowcoach.ie/financial-coaching
• https://www.callfc.co.uk
• https://catherinepope.com
• http://www.catplummer.com
• http://www.cubiccoaching.co.uk
• https://thefemalemoneydoctor.com
• https://www.figureoutmoney.co.uk
• https://financiallyhappy.ltd
• https://futurebalance.co.uk
  
• https://www.makingsenseofmoney.co.uk
• https://www.masteryourmoney.co.uk
• https://www.mint-coaching.com
• https://www.moneyflowmastery.co.uk
• https://www.moneygoatfinancecoaching.com
• https://www.moneymattersfinancialcoaching.co.uk
• http://www.moneymindsetcoaching.co.uk
• www.myfinancialcoach.co.uk
• https://www.pachiramoney.com
• https://www.pantheralife.co.uk
• https://www.paulclaireaux.com
• http://www.projectm-mindmoney.com 
• http://www.savvymoneymentor.co.uk
• https://separationoptions.co.uk
• http://serenitylifestyle.co.uk
• https://www.themindfulmoneycoach.co.uk
• http://www.themoneypanel.co.uk
• http://www.thenetworthacademy.com
• https://www.thesavvycorner.com
• https://thisgirltalksmoney.com
• http://www.wealth-coach.co.uk
• https://www.yourmoneysorted.co.uk
• https://www.youronelife.co.uk

While this isn't part of our training, we have a short business development session at the end of the 8 week course. 

We can also connect recent trainees with buddies within the wider Wise Monkey community. The community is very supportive in coming up with ideas to generate clients and sometimes this is the focus of our regular Wise Monkey Community Zoom sessions.

As a Financial Coach trained by Wise Monkey you'll also be eligible to be listed on websites like VouchedFor and Boring Money. These platforms can help you raise your profile online and match you with clients.

Financial Coaching isn't yet a recognised profession in the UK, so there is no external qualification or accreditation body to align with. Currently we issue a certificate upon completion of the course.

Our vision for later in 2022 is that the Wise Monkey training will offer new (and past) trainees the opportunity to attain an externally validated, nationally recognised qualification in coaching and mentoring.

Both Simonne Gnessen and George Callaghan have undertaken their own Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) Level 7 coaching and mentoring qualification in 2021 to prepare to take the Wise Monkey training to another level. This has moved us closer towards making the Wise Monkey training a nationally recognised, independently assessed, formal coaching and mentoring qualification.

Wise Monkey's Financial Coach Practitioner Certificate Training is an intensive eight week course, with 54 hours of live online training sessions, plus access to an online training platform, which offers an unrivalled blended learning experience. The platform offers access to a wealth of valuable additional resources, recorded sessions, demo coaching videos and exercises which everyone can access for at least 6 months following the training. Plus you’ll get online access to a Dropbox folder containing all the resources developed by Wise Monkey and a broad and wide range of additional resources, and spreadsheets which will help you get going with your own Financial Coaching practice.

The course teaches you a broad and comprehensive range of skills for coaching clients both in relation to behavioural change as well as the practical aspects of money. You're taught a number of coaching models and through interactive role plays are able to consolidate your learning process. You're taught about the practical aspects of money management including budgeting, debt management, the differences between coaching, mentoring and advice, and how to gather the information required to coach clients effectively. You also spend time learning about money and emotion, common money behaviours and challenges and are then shown a number of methods and techniques for promoting successful behaviour change. At the end of the course you have everything you need to coach clients on both the behavioural and practical aspects of money. 

The Certified Money coach course is a distance learning programme taught remotely via zoom from the US. It provides a certification after completing case studies based around the course content. The course teaches a very specific 4 stage process designed by the Money Coaching Institute in helping clients to identify their behaviours and patterns around money, and provides a structure for working through these patterns and behaviours to promote change where behaviours are challenging. You learn about brain function and chemistry and the history of money as an introduction to the theory. You're also taught how to use the Institute’s money archetypes (as detailed in Deborah Price’s book ‘Money Magic’) as both a theory and tool for working with clients to promote behavioural change. The course therefore gives you a specific and focused method to follow with clients on creating money behaviour changes. 

Yes, you're more that welcome to come along to the 3 evening seminar series, starting on 10th January, which teaches some of the financial content you may need in a future role as a Financial Coach. It provides plenty of opportunity for participation and to answer questions in a very small and safe group. George is a brilliant trainer and as an economist too, talks through the economic landscape explaining why Financial Coaching is gaining so much traction right now, and provides lots of business ideas along the way.

Many people attend this training before the main training, so it's fine if you want to do it as a stand alone for now.

You'll be invited to an online platform to go alongside the live training sessions and this will host resources that George will refer to, plus slides and recordings of each of the training sessions. You'll be able to access these for at least 6 months after the training and be able to download the slides via the platform for future reference. You can also gain access to the recordings to watch at any point in the future outside of the online platform.

It depends what you charge and how many hours you coach and whether you limit it to a pay as you go hourly service, package your sessions and/or offer group coaching sessions.

As an example, if you charge £100 per hour, say, and charge for 14 coaching hours per week, working 46 weeks a year, this would add up to about £64K per annum turnover. 

If you don't come from a financial services background, we'd suggest attending our Personal Finance Seminar Series.

Recommended Books: Pinterest board on Books.

Books which could specifically help with the training include: Sheconomics; The Solutions Focus; The Chimp Paradox; Seven Stages of Money Maturity; Coaching Skills: A Handbook; Co-Active Coaching & Financial Therapy

Recommended TED Talks: Pinterest board on TED Talks