FINC13001 - Estate Planning

General Information

Unit Synopsis

This unit covers the role of the financial advisor in estate and succession planning. You will examine the legal and taxation issues related to estate and succession planning. You will apply the skills required for managing the client relationship and construct an estate and succession plan for a client situation. In this unit you will have the opportunity to integrate the broad range of knowledge and skills required of a practicing Financial Planner into a practice focused project based on a practical client situation.

Details

Level Undergraduate
Unit Level 3
Credit Points 6
Student Contribution Band SCA Band 4
Fraction of Full-Time Student Load 0.125
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites

Pre-requisites: FINC19016 Retirement and Superannuation and FINC19019 Insurance Planning

Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).

Class Timetable View Unit Timetable
Residential School No Residential School

Unit Availabilities from Term 3 - 2024

Term 2 - 2025 Profile
Online

Attendance Requirements

All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).

Assessment Overview

Recommended Student Time Commitment

Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.

Assessment Tasks

Assessment Task Weighting
1. Practical Assessment 50%
2. Take Home Exam 50%

This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).

Consult the University's Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades

Past Exams

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Previous Feedback

Term 2 - 2023 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 100.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 20.69% response rate.

Feedback, Recommendations and Responses

Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.

Source: Student Unit Teaching Evaluation
Feedback
Sessional staff did not meet students expectations when it came sufficient guidance in constructing an estate plan.
Recommendation
Create a pre-recorded tutorial explaining what to do in the assessment, and coach Sessional staff to provide guidance on the assessment.
Action Taken
Additional resources were provided by Sessional teaching staff and Unit coordinator to assist students construct an estate plan to meet student expectations.
Source: Student Unit Teaching Evaluation
Feedback
Students are asking for the current detailed rubrics to set out the extent of the detail required in the assessments.
Recommendation
Continue to improve the rubrics each term, as it also serves as an assessment feedback document
Action Taken
Improvements were made to the Feedback Form to cover details of what needs to be included in the assessment estate plan.
Source: Student Unit Teaching Evaluations and self-reflection
Feedback
Saturday scheduled online timed take-home examinations were unpopular.
Recommendation
Arrange with the administrators to avoid scheduling Saturday online timed take-home examinations
Action Taken
There were no exams scheduled for Saturdays in T2 2023.
Source: Student Unit Teaching Evaluation
Feedback
Student found the prescribed textbook difficult to engage with as it is a legal publication.
Recommendation
From T2 2023 prescribed textbooks will be replaced with unit coordinator unit content and journal articles.
Action Taken
All unit content has been prepared by the Unit coordinator with no longer any need for prescribed textbooks.
Source: Student Evaluation
Feedback
The students expressed concerns regarding the weekly quizzes, citing that the allocated time and the 10% weighting seemed disproportionate. They conveyed that the quizzes demanded more time for completion, particularly due to the perceived necessity of conducting research to address the theory-based questions.
Recommendation
Consider transforming the weekly quizzes into tutorial materials and give more emphasis to the Estate Plan assessment. Consequently, this would streamline the assessment structure from ten items to two, aligning it with the format commonly observed in other financial planning units.
Action Taken
In Progress
Source: Student Evaluation
Feedback
Update the learning material to be more understandable and relevant to our state of study - Queensland rather than being based on the NSW laws.
Recommendation
Consider updating the content with learning material that reflects other Australian States as well.
Action Taken
In Progress
Unit learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate legal, ethical and commercial principles pertinent to estate and succession planning
  2. Solve estate and succession planning problems using ethical financial planning principles
  3. Prepare professional estate and succession plans for a variety of client circumstances
  4. Apply communication techniques for effective client relationship building.

This unit will become part of the Financial Planning suite of units that is accredited by the Financial Planning Education Council using its own standards and the RG146 ASIC standard for Financial Planners. This proposed unit is designed to fit within the overall strategy for accreditation within this regime.

Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Learning Outcomes
Assessment Tasks Learning Outcomes
1 2 3 4
1 - Practical Assessment • • • •
2 - Take Home Exam • •
Alignment of Graduate Attributes to Learning Outcomes
• Introductory Level
• Intermediate Level
• Graduate Level
Graduate Attributes Learning Outcomes
1 2 3 4
1 - Communication • • • •
2 - Problem Solving • • •
3 - Critical Thinking • • • •
4 - Information Literacy • • •
5 - Team Work • •
6 - Information Technology Competence • •
7 - Cross Cultural Competence • • • •
8 - Ethical practice • • •
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Graduate Attributes
• Introductory Level
• Intermediate Level
• Graduate Level
Assessment Tasks Graduate Attributes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 - Practical Assessment • • • • • • • •
2 - Take Home Exam • • • • • • •