About

Digital badges from the Institute of Financial Planning.

Objectives

The Institute of Financial Planning believes that it is important for financial planners to have their qualifications recognized and to be able to easily display their credentials. The digital badge project goes hand in hand with our determination to increase the effectiveness and visibility of our professional training and development programs and our efforts to modernize. It lets us showcase the quality of the Institute’s training that allows people to practise the financial planning profession in Québec.

Digital badge certification

A digital badge, or ebadge, is a digital attestation of certification, training or achievement. It is a secure, portable image file that captures more information than a simple paper certificate or diploma. It contains a detailed description of the certification content and criteria, the issue date, the identity of the recipient and other metadata, such as the framework underlying the certification, the competencies acquired, proof of receipt, etc.

Since the badge is digital and online, it can be kept in a portfolio of competencies attached to a personal profile. This allows the holder to display their badges and especially to share them easily online (website, social media such as LinkedIn, email, etc.). A PDF diploma can also be generated using a digital badge.

The digital badge is generated by an IT system that complies with the Open Badges standard, which was created in 2011 by Mozilla to make badges permanent, easy to find using a search engine and able to be transferred to multiple other current and future competency portfolio platforms. Since then, tens of millions of badges that meet this standard have been issued all over the world.

Technologies

The Institute’s digital badges use Badge Factor, a digital badge management plugin on WordPress, which has been one of the most popular content management platforms for many years. Badge Factor 2.0 is based on and integrated with Badgr Server, the most widely used freeware digital badge server system in the world. It meets the Open Badges 2.0 standard, which is managed by IMS Global in the United States.

Competency framework

We offer digital badge certification for our professional training activities, that is, for people with an financial planning diploma. This digital certification attests that the holder has taken the Professional Training course (PT course) and passed the Institute’s exam. It is mandatory, in Québec, to take the PT course and pass the Institute’s exam in order to use the financial planner title (F.Pl./Pl. Fin.).

The Institute’s PT course is based on the integrated personal financial planning (IPFP) process, an analysis method developed by the Institute, and on knowledge and competencies in the 7 financial planning areas. The Collection contains the theoretical and technical content required to successfully complete the PT course. A summary of the process (Situational Integration Framework) is presented in the Professional Standards, 2020 Revision.