The Boston Institute of Finance is neither a web-only set of classes, nor a traditional, physical classroom – it aims, instead, to be both. Co-founder and COO Patrick Fitzgerald set the company up to give students a self-paced, online curriculum, coupled with opportunities to interact with faculty at more traditional schools such as Boston University.
The young company gives educational licenses and designations for various financial services professionals. It competes head-to-head against some of the biggest names in online education, and draws both local students and pupils from locales as far-flung as Australia and Asia.
Patrick Fitzgerald
Title: COO, Acadient (parent of Boston Institute of Finance); Boston
Age: 44
Experience: Five and 1/2 at Acadient
So how does a company like yours work?
The Boston Institute of Finance is predominantly a web-based educational provider, however we do offer on-site training programs, on-site instruction, as well as online and virtual classrooms.
So we have self-paced programs online…[and] students can also enroll in virtual classroom programs. Our virtual classroom programs tend to be different than the majority of virtual classroom programs in the marketplace today because they combine both [self-paced online] study with live, instructor-led study … We have found with our partners that the combination of the two represents the highest quality learning experience for the student.
But you don’t have your own instructors, you work with other schools’ materials?
For instance, one of the top programs we offer to the marketplace is the Boston University program for financial planning. Today it’s one of the top programs in terms of number of enrollments in the industry. That program, the Boston University program for financial planning, fulfills the education requirement set by the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) Board of Standards in order to proceed to sit for the CFP national exam.
We provide the delivery mechanism for the online learning, we provide the platform for the virtual classroom program, and we also provide the student enrollment and support services, aside from academic support. So if there’s a question on content or an academic question, that’s directed to the Boston University faculty member who’s teaching that class.
Who are your competitors?
There are about 300 programs in the country for a student to choose from, both traditional classroom and online-type programs, and self-paced or self study-like programs … and the providers that we’re up against are the likes of a Kaplan, or the College of Financial Planning, which is owned by Apollo [Group], which owns the University of Phoenix.
And since you’re online, students can come from anywhere?
In fact they do. We have students that come from all over the world. A number of our programs are globally recognized – the CFP is a globally recognized designation. And the trend toward holistic financial planning is not a phenomenon that’s unique to the United States of America, for that matter – it’s a global phenomenon.
The aging demographics across the world, not just in the United States, are driving financial advisers to sharpen their skills … because their clients are bringing far more complex issues and questions to them. There are studies out there that say, for instance, 70 percent of those people that turn 65 – and by the way, by 2050, 22 percent of the U.S. population will be age 65 or over – will require some form of long-term care. Long-term care insurance is one of those things that, when you talk to an individual, they realize they’re going to need some sort of long-term care. But yet very few people purchase the insurance because it’s so expensive.
And so we’re trying to stay ahead of these trends and anticipate these needs, in working with our students and the corporations that we partner with … to identify the need for advanced training programs. So we’ve just launched, with Boston University, a program called the Retirement Management Analyst program, which really focuses on the process that the adviser should go through to design a portfolio for their client which would ensure that the client does not outlive their assets. Beyond that, we’re also in the final stages of getting ready to launch the first-ever program that would be broadcast nationally on the appropriate uses of a reverse mortgage to fund long-term care, or to fund long-term care insurance, so it’s a form of premium financing. And there are a lot of myths about reserve mortgages in the marketplace today, there’s a stigma attached to them, but when you really peel back the layers of the onion, you understand there’s some real merits to those products in certain situations.
The Boston Institute Of Finance’s Top Five Programs Or Designations:
Certified Financial Planner
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Management Accountant
Certified Mutual Fund Specialist
FINRA series test review
