RFP Capstone Programme: Integrated Plan Construction
RFP Capstone Programme: Integrated Plan Construction
The RFP Capstone domain tests your ability to integrate insurance, investment, tax, retirement, and estate planning into one defensible plan for a case client, and to explain the trade-offs clearly under exam conditions.
Core rules and concepts
- Begin with the client's goals, constraints, and cash flow, not with a product recommendation.
- State every projection assumption-inflation, returns, tax, salary growth, mortality-and justify it; an unsupported assumption is a scoring weakness.
- Keep the plan internally consistent: the net worth statement, cash-flow statement, goal funding, and recommendations must reconcile.
- Apply a funding hierarchy: emergency reserve and adequate protection first, then employer/EPF matching and tax reliefs, then discretionary investing.
- Document alternatives considered, conflicts of interest, scope limits, and the monitoring triggers that would force a plan review.
Worked example
A 42-year-old client earns 180,000 a year, spends 96,000, owes 1.2 million on a mortgage, holds 150,000 in savings and 600,000 in EPF, and has 300,000 of term cover; the spouse has none. Goals are retirement at 60 on 84,000 in today's money and 120,000 per child for education. Reasoning: first quantify the survivor gap-mortgage plus ten years of expenses far exceeds 300,000-so add term cover on both adults before raising investment contributions. Second, fund education separately at lower risk because the horizon is 8–11 years. Third, test the retirement projection at 6% pre-retirement and 4.5% post-retirement with 3% expense inflation; if the gap is large, recommend a higher savings rate or later retirement rather than a higher assumed return. Record the assumption set.
Traps that cost marks
- Raising the return assumption to close a funding gap instead of changing savings or goals.
- Ignoring the spouse's protection or the mortgage in the survivor analysis.
- Mixing nominal and real values in one projection.
- Recommending products before establishing affordability and goals.
- Forgetting tax treatment, liquidity, and beneficiary alignment.