Comprehensive Case Analysis and Plan Integration
This domain tests integration: can you take nine overlapping domains and produce one coherent, funded, prioritised plan whose assumptions are consistent across every module?
The integration order
- Solvency and protection: emergency reserve, then insurances that prevent a plan failure from a single event.
- Expensive debt: clear debt whose guaranteed cost exceeds expected returns.
- Tax sheltering: capture free money - employer matching and available allowances - before discretionary investing.
- Goal funding: education, property, retirement, in order of inflexibility and horizon.
- Estate and legacy: structure ownership and beneficiary nominations to match the funding plan.
Consistency checks
The same inflation rate must appear in the retirement projection, the education projection and the insurance needs analysis. The same expected return must appear in the cash-flow plan and the portfolio. A plan where retirement assumes 7% and the insurance calculation assumes 3% is internally contradictory and will be marked down.
Worked example
A couple, both 38, net 14,000 a month, has 30,000 of liquid savings, 220,000 of mortgage at 5.2%, two children aged 4 and 7, and a target retirement income of 55,000 a year. Step 1: reserve of six months at 5,000 essential = 30,000 - already funded. Step 2: mortgage at 5.2% is close to expected portfolio return; retain it for the tax deduction if any, otherwise accelerate modestly. Step 3: confirm both employer matches are captured. Step 4: quantify education needs first because the horizon is fixed at 10 and 14 years. Step 5: project retirement on the residual surplus, using the same 5% return assumption throughout. The recommendation is a funding waterfall, not a list.
Traps
- Recommending a product before the waterfall is complete.
- Different assumptions in different modules.
- Ignoring the client's behavioural readiness to follow the plan.
- No stated priority when two goals compete for the same cash.