In the personal finance blogo world I have not seen much about the Canadian Securities Exam. I find this rather surprising given that we are all interested in finance. So, I thought I would kick things off and provide my own review.
The Canadian Securities Institute (CSI) is an educator to the financial world and the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) is an introductory, and probably the most well-known of the CSI courses. From the website:
“The CSC is recognized as the benchmark in the financial services industry and delivers the knowledge and skills employers demand…
The CSC is basically a broad discussion of the entire financial sector jammed into a few hundred pages of text. They attempt to give the students a solid grasp (albeit at a beginner level) of a variety of topics: the economy, regulations, corporation financing, fixed income and equities instruments, derivatives, mutual and hedge funds, portfolio planning, …
The course not only comes with a textbook but also some online learning aids. There are forums/chat rooms where you can ask other students and CSI staff questions and the responses are often well answered. There are also videos, exercises, quizzes, and games all to further your understanding of the topics.
The Good:
The content is well written and does provide a good (general) understanding of a wide array of topics. It is a one year course but I found that I was able to burn through it in a few months of fairly leisurely reading (although I hadn’t spent much time reading anything else). Some of the online activities were useful in reinforcing the concepts.
The CSC cost does qualify as a tax credit.
Upon successful completion of this course you are almost qualified to sell mutual funds. I believe that one would still have to complete the Conduct and Practices exam as well.
The Bad:
The course may be started at any time, however the CSI seems to publish the books in May and the exams are based on the recent content. So the content sometimes lags current legislation and thus you are expected to know (for the exams) what is in the text even if in the real life you need to practice something else.
The online content is often typical of Computer Based Training. I have found that most CBTs are too light on pushing the student to understand and are overly simplistic (matching games, multiple guess, crossword puzzles). Whereas the exam preparation section itself contains subtle things that were briefly mentioned in the text but never in the CBT.
The course is currently costs $880! That’s a lot of dough to shell out for those of us just interested in the material. Upon successful completion of this course you are almost qualified to sell mutual funds. While the content in here is good and covers a lot, I’m not sure that I would trust buying a product from someone who only has this course under their belt.
The Summary:
If you are going into the financial services sector then you’ll be doing this course anyway, you don’t need my opinion. However, if you are a novice investor then this might be worth your time. I personally found that there was too much emphasis on things like how the Self-Regulated Organizations operate and not enough about how to analyze the financial instruments themselves.
The CBT portion alone, while helpful, is certainly not worth the tuition. If you can find a copy of the text somewhere it is well worth an investors time to go through it. So I only recommend this course if you are serious about taking control of your own finances or are going into a financial career. If you are an investor who just wants to understand what their financial planner is telling them then I’m sure there are plenty of good library books.
16 responses so far ↓
1 Product Reviews » Review: the Canadian Securities Exam // Oct 22, 2007 at 14:50
[...] the Wealthy Canadian wrote an interesting post today on Review: the Canadian Securities ExamHere’s a quick excerpt In the personal finance blogo world I have not seen much about the Canadian Securites Exam. I find this rather surprising given that we are all interested in finance. So, I thought I would kick things off and provide my own review. The Canadian Securities Institute (CSI) is an educator [...]
2 Neil Galloway // Oct 22, 2007 at 19:05
Good article. I would agree with everything you have said here, but will add a bit. I am a practicing software engineer in Calgary, but I took this course a few years ago for my own interest.
One thing you should note is that if you don’t use the course (as in work for a mutual fund company or such) then it does “expire” after a couple years. Then you have to take it again anyways. This rule might have changed, but it was the case when I took mine.
I personally got a fair bit out of the course as it is broad and forces you to read and study because you will be writing an exam. That being said, you can learn all this and more if you just go to your public library and reading online from various sites.
You mentioned there is not much on analyzing investment instruments. This is true. The course discusses a variety of measurements, but will not say “this is good” or “this is bad”. That is up to you to figure out what it means. There is also an overview of trends (i.e. interest rates rise, stocks fall), how markets work, and other fundamentals that are good to know, but not required to make money in the market.
You get a copy of the textbooks and there are also pdf’s of the texts as well. I’m not sure if they are publicly available since they charged me to order the books back at the time, but I’m sure you could find them somewhere.
3 Neil Galloway // Oct 22, 2007 at 19:09
Further to my last comment. If anyone has any questions on the course and whether they should take it, you can send me a personal message (just use the contact page on my site).
If you live in the Calgary area, I do have the hard copy books that I would feel free to loan out to anyone who wants them.
Personally, if you plan on getting into the industry or are just starting investing and know nothing, then it might be a good course to take. Otherwise, I wouldn’t worry about it.
4 FourPillars // Oct 23, 2007 at 03:38
I took the CSC a while ago – 1995? I didn’t think it was that good – some parts were pretty useful but it focussed too much on oil, gas & mining and the regulatory stuff. It was not an easy course as you had to memorize quite a bit of info.
It’s better than nothing but given the plethora of online info, I’d say a DIY investor would be better off not taking it. $880? That’s a lot of dough.
Mike
5 wc // Oct 23, 2007 at 04:30
Yeah, $880 is a lot . Useful if you are thinking about pursuing a career in the financial sector, but but for us DIYers I’m not so sure. In the effort of being frugal I’d probably go to the library if I had to do it again. And, as Neil says, it does expire anyway.
6 Brip Blap // Oct 25, 2007 at 02:22
Not that it’s any better in the US, but I find it amazing that you can take a quick course for less than $1000 and suddenly be qualified to sell funds to people. Not that it doesn’t mean someone couldn’t be knowledgeable and good, but it’s a very small amount of “formal” training, isn’t it?
7 FourPillars // Oct 25, 2007 at 03:15
Actually BB – you only need to take the “IFIC” course to sell mutual funds in Canada – although you might need one or two easy regulatory courses as well. I’ve taken both and the “IFIC” is a joke. The CSC is actually a fairly difficult course – probably equivalent to a university or college course (although probably not as long).
The IFIC only costs about $300.
Mike
8 wc // Oct 25, 2007 at 23:02
BB, Yes, perhaps the best thing to learn is that people who are licensed to sell you these things are often no more knowledgeable than you are. It’s only slightly different than a vacuum cleaner salesman – they probably only learn a enough to get them selling. At least with the CSC you learn a bit of how things work, not just what to say to sell something.
The interesting thing is that the CSC is taught, in conjunction with the CSI, in many universities both for undergrads and MBAs.
FP, thanks for your comments. Did you take the IFIC before or after the CSC? And what was your motivation?
9 Chuck // Mar 18, 2008 at 03:30
This is the information I had been looking for all over the net, very well written
I am a university student currently in 2nd year econ and plan to take this over the summer along with a school course and working, I am looking forward to it.
I hope the investment is worth the trouble in trying to enter the financial industry (we will see)
10 Mark // Nov 28, 2008 at 04:40
As a recent arrival in Canada, having worked in the financial services industry and the holder of various academic qualifications and a CFP, it intrigued me that one had to write the CSC in order to even be considered for employment. I guess each country has its ways. Nevertheless I wrote both exams in a month. Although I did very well I must say as an introductory course it was remarkably difficult. I would recommend that you at least put in an effort. I agree with the earlier comments that it is expensive and it will not provide you with enough knowledge to truly empower you. Quite the contrary in fact, many of the concepts have been rejected by practitioners and academics alike, for example charting, and yet you are expected to interpret some of these “patterns”. Regardless, if you are a new arrival to Canada the section on RRSPs, RRIFs etc are worthwhile.
11 wc // Jan 14, 2009 at 23:00
Thank-you for your comment, Mark.
I checked out your profile at your website, http://www.moneywise.co.za/about.php. Quite impressive… and interesting that a Finance PhD still has to write the CSC! Although Canada is like that in many professions. Many engineers from around the world are not recognised in Canada, either.
12 CSC Practice // Jan 24, 2010 at 19:59
If you want to practice hundreds of questions online using innovative technology and feedback mechanism, visit http://www.cscpractice.com and sign up. You’re guaranteed to pass after practicing that many questions that are so similar to the real exam and same format and time limits.
13 Review of the CSC Check | the Wealthy Canadian // Jul 13, 2010 at 19:53
[...] Not sure about the Canadian Securities Course? Check out my review on it, here [...]
14 Thomas Zay // Jul 31, 2010 at 17:33
I sent two posts to your site and you don’t even reply. I hope the truth does not wake you up about the Canadian Securities Institute, the IIROC and the Ontario Securities Institute.
Thank you for your interest
15 Thomas Zay // Oct 6, 2010 at 02:10
I have take the courses so please don’t insult my intelligence when you state the following
“The CSC is recognized as the benchmark in the financial services industry and delivers the knowledge and skills employers demand…
P.S. Do you give me the permission to use this quote on my website?
16 wc // Oct 15, 2010 at 18:35
Thomas, thank-you for your opinion and comments. I did not write this to entice others to take the course, only to share my thoughts on it. I am not in the financial services sector, I took the course because I wanted to learn the same things that I thought others in the finance sector had learnt. I find value in all sorts of learning, and books such as Intelligent Investor (by Graham and Dodds) are certainly cheaper, and arguably more insightful, they did not provide what I was looking for, i.e., the training that my friendly neighborhood mutual fund salesman took. With the CSC, I was able to at least get a glimpse of that.
After taking the course, do I feel qualified to sell securities? No. But I did learn a lot – which is what I was after and have continued to take other CSI courses. Why would I continue to take them? Largely because of the supplemental learning that goes on beyond the books. I can get any book from the library, but few authors create exercises, exams, and participate in discussion.
I have no intention of insulting your intelligence and please note that the quote which you criticize has come directly from the CSI website.
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