Business Students Assume Financial Advisor Posts

Walk down any hallway at Huntington High School and peek into a classroom and you will see students and teachers fully engaged. Career and Financial Management course students have been hard at work on their last project of the year, the financial advisor project.

“After learning about the various financial instruments available to consumers during our investments unit, students were tasked with stepping into the shoes of financial advisors and participating in an introductory fact-finding meeting with a perspective client,” teacher Bryan Outsen explained. “On December 15, each of our wonderful teacher volunteers, Suzi Biagi, Allison Bean, Danielle Raguzin, James DiMeglio, Donna Nugent, Daphne Ali, Ivy Avylero and Marlo Romero, were given a client profile based on previous clients I had during my time as an advisor, that they used to answer the questions from the students.”

During this initial “first call,” the students had to inquire about current financial situations and assets available, future financial and retirement goals for the client, and the prospect’s attitudes toward risk. They then spent the following week researching recommendations for accounts their clients can then use in order to reach these goals. Students used various tools ranging from Morningstar.com for investment analysis, performance, and risk level, AI to help determine possible banking instruments available in the Huntington Area, and then Google Slides and Canva to create an actual client facing presentation that outlined all of their recommendations.

Each group had to make a minimum of four recommendations based on the information they uncovered in their first meeting and tie each of those recommendations to achieving the financial goals each prospect thought was most important.

Finally on December 22, the teachers came back to hear their recommendations and ask questions based on the portfolio ideas the student advisors presented. After both of the appointments, teachers evaluated the groups on professionalism, presentation style, research, slide efficiency, and sales pitch. Ultimately, the teachers were asked whether or not they would hire their assigned team as advisors they would be comfortable using in the future.

“In the second year of this project we have seen tremendous growth in not only the interest in the research portion of the portfolios for clients, but also the art of the sales pitch, where they have to not only show someone a recommendation, but more importantly explain to them why it is the best option to reach their financial goals,” Mr. Outsen said. “This was the same type of training I utilized with new representatives at my old firm and it is amazing to see how high school students have picked this up and ran with it.”