How to become a Financial Planner in Ohio – OH | License Certification Requirements | Job Description | What is a Financial Planner?

Every financial planner dreams of landing that billionaire client, the whale that makes all your studying, all your time in the trenches, pay off in one fantastically lucrative account.

If you live in Ohio, that means you had better plant yourself in Cleveland to go fishing for that big payoff, because that’s where the Lerner family lives.

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Getting The Right Education to Become a Financial Planner in Ohio

You’ll need the degree because clients and employers alike in Ohio will be looking hard at your educational qualifications before they will sign you up to take on any kind of fiduciary responsibility for them. Financial matters today are not for amateurs or learning on the job; you need the right kind of education to establish your bona fides in areas like accounting, business, economics, and finance in order to build trust.

College credits are also a must when it comes to earning most of the important professional certifications that the industry relies on to establish qualifications and that clients count on to assess your skills.

Bachelor’s Degrees for Financial Planners

A four-year bachelor’s degree is the entry-level for most financial planning careers. Some of the most common majors for this career are:

Bachelor in Financial Planning
Bachelor in Financial Services
Bachelor in Accounting
Bachelor in Business
Bachelor in Trust and Wealth Management

These liberal-arts programs offer not only a great deal of subject-matter specific education, but also all the additional coursework that make for well-rounded college graduates: classes in communications and English, history and social studies, history and literature. These things may not seem immediately applicable to financial planning, but they are part of giving you the critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities that everyone in planning will need.

In any case, you will want to make sure that you are selecting a CFP Board-Registered program for either your major or a minor you will pick up. That’s because the CFP Board offers one of the most important professional certifications in the business, the Certified Financial Planner credential… and they only offer it to individuals who have accumulated 15 credits in 9 specific subject areas. Those are credits you are guaranteed to receive in a Board-Registered program, prepping you for the rest of your career.

Check out our comprehensive list of Financial Planning Bachelor’s Degrees to launch your career in Financial Planning

Master’s Degrees for Financial Planners

If a bachelor’s is a minimum requirement to get started in financial planning, a master’s is where you go if you want to rise to the top of the profession. These two-year programs put together an advanced, subject-specific curriculum that will give you a strong practical and theoretical basis for understanding the most complex financial instruments and economic conditions. You take part of research projects and investigations that help you investigate and understand all the many moving parts in modern financial planning. You learn under the guidance of instructors who are experts in the field, and have the opportunity to enter into internships to put your new skills into practice.

It’s the kind of education you need to get that big corner office as a senior leader at your investment bank or management firm, or to impress those high-net-worth clients that will earn you the big bucks.

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Selecting an Accredited Degree Program

At any level of study, you will need to pick a school or degree that holds the right specialty accreditation. That means being accredited by one of these three agencies:

You probably don’t think much about accreditation usually, because almost every American university you would consider already holds a general accreditation for their institution. That means they have been evaluated by one of the major regional accrediting organizations in the country to establish their academic and administrative bona fides, guaranteeing students they are getting the kind of education they should expect with their degree.

But in specialized fields like business or accounting, you need an accrediting body that digs in a little bit deeper. These agencies look at the curriculum, instructors, and industry relationships that these programs offer, and ensure they line up with the needs and expectations of American businesses. That means you’ll be getting the kind of training you need to hit the ground running as a financial planner after graduation.

Enrolling in a FinTech Bootcamp for Financial Planning

Graduation from college is just step one in a much longer path of training and education you’ll probably go through during the course of your career. Whether it’s tests for certification exams or new concepts in finance, you’ll have to keep studying just to keep pace in financial planning.

And if you want to get ahead in the industry, you might opt for something like a fintech bootcamp.

Fintech is the new series of developments that are coming from a mash-up of high-performance, high-capacity computing and data analytics and the stream of relevant financial data that is coming out at an ever-increasing pace. Masters of fintech know what’s going on in the markets minutes or seconds before it happens; they see trends that others miss, and they master new instruments for trade and investing like cryptocurrencies while others are still scratching their heads.

A bootcamp is a fast-paced path to becoming one of those enlightened masters, and if you get through it, you’ll command top dollar in your industry. Although it’s an intensive course of study, it’s relatively inexpensive and you can be finished in a few weeks or months. You definitely won’t get bored; a series of hands-on projects using real-world data and realistic techniques keep coming at you, teaching concepts like:

Advanced Excel analysis
Python programming and financial library use
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Blockchain technologies like Ethereum and Solidity
AI and machine learning in financial analysis

All of it is taught by instructors who are fresh from the front-lines of fintech, and undertaken together with your dedicated cohort of fellow students. Along the way, career services teams will give you a hand punching up your resume, building out a project portfolio, or even lining up interviews at the hottest new fintech startups.

While bootcamps were originally strictly a face-to-face, full-time endeavor, you can find a broad range of different formats available today, including such part-time, online programs as those offered by these major universities:

You can find an option that will work for you no matter what you current position or commitments are, which leaves you no excuse to not get ahead.

Adding a Professional Certification to Boost Your Qualifications as a Financial Planner

A more traditional way to add to your value and credentials in the industry is through picking up professional certifications. You will find that many clients and almost all employers will be looking for these important little letters behind your name, verifying your knowledge and skills and speaking to your ethical standards in an industry where ethics are key. Some of the most popular are:

Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) – Requires 27 semester credit hours in specified courses, although not a completed degree, plus 3 years experience
Chartered Investment Counselor (CIC) – Not required; however, must hold a CFA, plus 5 years experience
Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) – Hold 4 years combined professional and/or university experience
Certified Financial Planner (CFP) – Hold a bachelor’s degree, plus 3 years experience
Personal Financial Specialist (PFS) – Have 75 hours personal financial planning education; also, hold a CPA, which requires a degree, plus 2 years experience

They each require passing a knowledge test, some accumulation of experience, and some college credits. The CFP requires not only the bachelor’s degree, but that you have earned 15 of those credits in their specific subject areas. If you somehow managed to get through your entire college career without meeting that requirement, if you’re coming in from a different field, for instance, you can still meet the qualifications by enrolling in a post-baccalaureate certificate course that is Board-Registered.

How to Obtain an Investment Adviser Representative License in Ohio

All prospective investment adviser (IA) firm proprietors and representatives (IARs) in Ohio must become licensed through the Ohio Division of Securities by registering through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA’s) IARD (Investment Advisor Registration Depository) system. Although most investment advisers take the Series 65 Exam, under the Ohio Securities Act, Ohio Revised Code, a passing score on any one of the following exams, along with passing the SIE (Securities Industry Essentials) exam, will allow a license to be granted in the state:

Investment company representative (IR), series 6 top off
Direct participation programs representative (DR), series 22 top-off
General securities principal, series 24
Investment company and variable contracts principal, series 26
Direct participation programs principal, series 39
Uniform securities agent state law examination, series 63
Uniform investment adviser law examination, series 65
Uniform combined state law examination, series 66

You’ll more than likely start off as an investment advisor at one of the many major retail firms in the state, like JP Morgan Chase, Edelman Financial, or Charles Schwab. But it’s relatively easy to strike off on your own as a sole proprietor in an investment advising firm in Ohio, once you build up the expertise and the client list to support such a move.

How to Obtain a Stockbroker License in Ohio

Securities salespersons in Ohio must be licensed by the Ohio Division of Securities as well as registered with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through FINRA’s Central Registration Depository (CRD). Although registered reps need to take the Series 7 exam so as to be able to work with a broad range of securities products, principals of broker-dealer firms can license their firms by obtaining a passing score on one or more of the following exams:

Registered options principal (Series 4)
General securities principal (Series 24)
Investment company and variable contracts products principal (Series 26)
Direct participation programs principal (Series 39)
Municipal securities principal (Series 53)
Uniform combined state law exam (Series 66)

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How to Obtain a License to Sell Life Insurance and Fixed Annuities in Ohio

The State of Ohio’s Department of Insurance licenses life insurance producers, some of whom may sell fixed annuities so as to offer financial planning services. Pre-licensing study is required in Ohio before you can take the exam, and can be met through a 20-hour classroom course or successful completion of a self-study option. You may also be eligible for a pre-licensing study waiver if you hold one of these industry certifications:

Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU)
Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS)
Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC)
Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC)
Certified Financial Planner (CFP)
Fellow of the Life Management Institute (FLMI)
Life Underwriter Training Council Fellow (LUTCF)

The state handles licensing through NIPR, the National Insurance Producer Registry. You will have to pass the official licensing exam administered through PSI first, however.

Twenty-four hours of continuing education is required biannually in order to maintain a life insurance producer’s license in the state, three hours of which must be in ethics.

If a licensed life insurance producer in Ohio wishes to sell variable annuities, securities licensure through the Ohio Division of Securities and registration with FINRA is also required. This means passing scores on the Series 6 examination must be obtained. Continuing education requirements maintained by both Ohio’s Department of Insurance and FINRA must be upheld in order to maintain a variable annuity license.