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 1 - 2025

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 - 2024 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 62.50% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 26.67% 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 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
Assessment has been streamlined as recommended.
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
Content has been updated to reflect other Australian states.
Source: Feedback given by two Students in the form of MyExperience responses.
Feedback
Satisfaction scores on 10 and 21 September 2024
Recommendation
As these scores reflect high levels of satisfaction during the term, the metrics in the end of term student evaluations need to be addressed with improvements to unit requirements clarity, usefulness of content, knowledge and skills, and assessment feedback by returning to textbooks.
Action Taken
In Progress
Source: Self- reflection
Feedback
Usefulness of learning materials needs improving
Recommendation
Prescribed an updated Estate Planning textbook for 2025.
Action Taken
In Progress
Source: Recommendations by CQU Learning Design & innovation team, discussions with Discipline colleagues from the Economics, Finance, Property Disciplines
Feedback
Low content engagement, especially pre-recorded content video recordings, because they are considered too long by students
Recommendation
"Chunking" video recordings by topic instead of one long pre-recorded content video
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 • • • • • • •