The Certified Student Loan Professional

This episode of the CSLP podcast provides an overview of why the CSLP program came into existence, the need for financial advice around student loan repayment, and the importance of having trained financial advisors. 

The Certified Student Loan Professional Program, Who, What, and Why Now

This podcast explains the origins of the CSLP program and its purpose.

Jantz and Heather discuss their history in helping borrowers create smarter repayment plans and why financial advisors need to position themselves to act in their clients’ best interest when they find someone with student debt. Student debt touches 1 in 4 households.

CPA and CFP should not ignore this element of a client’s financial profile as sometimes there are opportunities to help by reducing payment burdens and/or increasing cash flow for other financial goals. 

Larry: [00:00:14] Hello everyone. Welcome to the certified student loan professional podcast. This is Larry Taylor. And today we’re going to give you an overview of the CSLP program. We’re going to discuss why financial professionals need more education on the advising process around student loans with over 45 million consumers repaying student debt.

Larry: [00:00:36] Financial professionals are likely to see them in the normal course of their work whether it’s tax preparation, financial planning insurance or investments. In this edition of the podcast we’ll introduce you to Jantz Hoffman and Heather Jarvis,. Jantz is the founder and CEO and also an instructor in the program. And Heather is a member of the board and an instructor as well. We’ll talk about the need for the program and some of the key features of the content as well as why people with student debt need to seek out qualified financial professionals to help with incorporating their student loans in their overall financial plan.

Larry: [00:01:18] So to get started Jantz tell us how this idea came about and a little bit more about your background.

Jantz: [00:01:27] So my background of educating advisors on student loans really grew out of my experiences. I have been providing advice to student loan borrowers directly since 2009 fell into it by chance I was helping out one of my friends who had hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans and was a veterinarian working in a Banfield PetSmart hospital and helped her out and from that helped another friend out and co-worker and I just sort of grew from there to the point where I was helping financial advisors across the country when it came to case design when they had clients that had student loans in total. There was probably about 900 or so financial advisors that I was supporting their firms and what I quickly found was that those financial advisors had absolutely no understanding of the various student loan repayment options. Didn’t really understand how it impacted or was affected by the financial planning that they were recommending outside of student loans or how student loans changed that planning that they were recommending and it was really a way for me to say hey I can only help so many people and we need more of these financial advisors that are educated and can help really incorporate student loan repayment into the comprehensive plans and recommendations that they are making. And I just saw a real lack of of support that was there from the financial services community. And Heather could probably attest more to some of the lack of education from the consumer side. But I saw the financial services industry being well suited and well positioned to sort of fill that gap to help reduce this impact that student debt is having across the country.

Larry: [00:03:31] I imagine Heather you had a slightly different entry. Tell us about how you got into this.

Heather: [00:03:40] I began my interest in student loans by borrowing a lot to pay for my education and when I was faced with figuring out a strategy for my student loans I found it very confusing and I quickly learned that student loan law is quite elaborate and convoluted and that you know managing student loans is very tricky. From the perspective of a student borrower and this was quite apparent to me because I had borrowed a lot to purchase an expensive legal education at Duke Law School and then I was practicing as a public interest lawyer on behalf of the poor which is not really well paid as far as its legal jobs go. So I had an opportunity to work with nonprofit organizations in Washington D.C. many years ago. Gosh like a dozen years ago it started and we did some advocacy work around improving student loan forgiveness and rate repayment plans so that debt would be more manageable and education could be more accessible. And then I also learned similar to what Jantz is saying that you know even if a student loan borrower could get good student loan advice which was next to impossible for them to find that that isn’t enough by itself it’s important to look at student loans within the larger financial context. So within the course of my training and education of other attorneys as well as university professionals and student loan borrowers themselves I came to realize that what I really wanted to do was start teaching financial advisors so that they could help people with their student loans and also advise folks about you know balancing other priorities like you know savings and the like.

Larry: [00:06:00] All right so so both of you kind of had simply started with a focus on you you saw consumers they had this issue and you were you were trying to help them. So how did how did the turn occur then to say maybe there’s an opportunity working with with people who were actually working with clients in financial advising situations how what what what. Flip the switch there I know and I want to ask you Heather because I know that you do a lot of speaking engagements and you’re typically talking to advisers. How did that evolve?

Heather: [00:06:38] Yes. So I had a lot of people reaching out to me since I was known as someone who had some experience working on these programs and that sort of led me to see the need and the thirst for information among financial advisors. I also think I saw it develop over the years as newer professionals and younger professional financial advisers became immersed in financial planning. They brought a modern perspective that included an understanding of debt as a big part of many people’s lives particularly more recent graduates whereas the sort of older generation of advisors might tend to be more knowledgeable about wealth management and have less awareness of the tremendous need that student loan borrowers have. So some of it was folks reaching out to me and then I knew had been already accredited as a provider of continuing education. And it’s just really grown very kind of organically as advisors you know access the training programs that I’ve done. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of enthusiasm because people want to do a good job for their clients and they recognize that this stuff is awfully complicated. So I guess we could somewhat fast forward to today or let’s say just within the last year that the certified student loan professional program now is is fully launched its in its probably third generation online. As as a learning tool an online learning tool. So what.

Larry: [00:08:45] What’s your experience been Jantz with with advisors that are reaching out and finding out about this program. What are they telling you?

Jantz: [00:08:58] Well I think the most of the advisors that I’m talking to have a great interest as Heather mentioned in assisting and helping their clients I mean that’s the primary driving force between every financial advisors they want to do good for their clients and what many of them are saying as they see this as a as a challenge in their clients lives. They see this as a challenge in the finances and they also see that in order for them to provide advice about some of the other more traditional financial advisory topics like retirement or kids college planning buying a home that the first priority has to be getting in order some sort of plan to deal with the student loans that they now have and what what else I think a lot of the advisers are gravitating towards with regards to CSLP designation is that whether or not an advisor knows student loan repayment or is allowed to provide advice on student loan repayment from their compliance department. Most financial advisors working with the younger market realize that they have to address this issue and they really wanted to create a differential between them who know their stuff and have gone through detailed education training adhere to code and ethics and those advisors that maybe are not as knowledgeable and could be doing harm to their clients. So most financial advisors are looking at saying Hey I want the education I want the knowledge but I also want to be able to draw a distinction that differentiates me from other advisors that may not really know this stuff to the level they should in order provide advice on it.

Larry: [00:10:43] What do you see as a potential liability.

Heather: [00:10:45] Well certainly you cannot give advice about subjects that you are not qualified to advise about. And although a financial adviser may have met certain educational and licensure requirements none of those traditional systems include any knowledge of student loans. So people can be practicing without having demonstrated their ability to properly analyze these cases. And as your question implies student loan matters are not the same as other debt management. There are sometimes counterintuitive actions that borrowers can benefit from such as minimizing rather than maximizing their payments in order to save money over time through for example forgiveness provisions. So an advisor that isn’t well trained could very easily make expensive mistakes which can subject them to complaints criticism and lawsuits by unhappy clients right.

Larry: [00:12:15] Assuming they find out mean it sounds like they may not find out if if ever that there was such an error that they paid thousands of dollars more than they perhaps should have. Or or or other types of issues that occur and maybe dance you can speak to that some of the some of the common mistakes that advisors might be making right now with their clients who absolutely aren’t.

Jantz: [00:12:43] Yeah. And before we kind of jump into that I would say that a number of of your traditional financial planning firms have identified this risk and many of them prohibit advice about student loan repayment and student loan forgiveness. Yet their advisors and representatives are still in the field doing giving that exact advice because they know they have to do it in order to establish any relationship with 50 percent of the clients under age 35 out there. So whether or not it’s prohibited and the liability exists I think is understood. But I think that the people on the front line that are meeting with clients realize they have to provide this advice if they want to engage with these prospects or potential clients. And when they do so they’re offering doing so and creating as Heather mentioned liability but problems for their clients. You can have private refinance recommendations to secure lower interest rates that may be detrimental to clients because they’re giving up consumer protections with regards to their federal loans and other forgiveness provisions that could occur with their federal student loans. Many times they’re recommending consolidations or are unfamiliar with the implications that tax preparation may have with regards to some of their clients that are on income driven repayment plans. So there’s a long list of missteps that financial advisers and tax advisers can do with clients that have student loans if they’re not understanding of the repayment options and the goals and objectives of that particular client and really looking at that client from a holistic perspective. Because with the way federal student loans in particular are repaid these days it’s very difficult to only give advice about one’s specific component of the financial plan without that having an impact on student debt. Whether that again be tax preparation retirement savings how they open up retirement accounts all of that is going to have its play in student loan repayment.

Heather: [00:15:01] Well and also chance as you know some of those mistakes that advisors can make are unfixable. If you recommend consolidation of federal student loans without fully understanding and counseling your client about what they are giving up your client can simply lose out on potentially very valuable benefits. You know up to the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousand dollars. And once it’s done it can be undone.

Jantz: [00:15:44] Yes. And I would add to that that one of the challenges with this arena is that advice for student loans is often provided to the borrowers through their loan servicers. And many times those loan servicers are providing inaccurate advice or advice that maybe doesn’t take into account historical payments or a comprehensive review of goals of a client. And even if a tax or financial adviser is relying upon what was being instructed from a federal loan servicer they their lack of knowledge to be able to catch errors or mistakes that could be detrimental their client is also a problem because the servicers do have historically not necessarily provided the most accurate and best comprehensive advice and the financial adviser a tax repair and there really needs to be positioned to be able to help catch those mistakes and counsel their clients as to what the reality would be based upon what they’re doing in their tax planning their financial planning and interpret the information they’re they’re being provided from their loan servicer.

Heather: [00:16:59] Right. And Jantz just to explain a little further what you said the loan servicing companies are hired by lenders in many cases the lender being the federal government to administer the loan programs. So they do the billing and accept the payments and student loan borrowers have to interact with these companies and rely on them for transactions and procedures and information. And the loan servicing companies as Jantz mentioned are renowned for being error prone. The data is clear that student loan borrowers have overall quite negative experiences. And so that that provides a financial adviser or an awesome opportunity right at the beginning to connect with a new client by acknowledging the likelihood that they’ve had a frustrating previous experience with their student loans and that they’ve sought information and run into barriers repeatedly and that can really be a great way to begin by establishing some rapport and. Trust and it’s also important to manage clients expectations in that regard. So you know I know Jantz has lots of horror stories about clients who are attempting to carry out a well crafted student loan plan but who run into roadblocks from the bureaucracy which is really quite cumbersome and sometimes requires a lot of advocacy in order to just get anything done.

Jantz: [00:18:55] Yeah. There are frequent issues with the loan servicers when you’re trying to implement the recommendations that you’re making. And I know I don’t always 100 percent fault the loan servicers because they are limited in the advice that they’re able to provide because they are not financial advisors they are not regulated to provide tax advice or advice about retirement planning. Nor are they really incentivized or prioritize making recommendations to clients with regards to again tax or financial planning that can impact their student loan repayment. So they are somewhat limited in the scope of the advice that they can provide. But as you mentioned they are also very error prone where they’re processing loan repayment requests for millions of people and they are struggling to do that efficiently and in a way that always produces the outcome that would be expected.

Larry: [00:19:59] So let’s let’s jump in a little bit to the to this. The actual CSLP program so that those advisors who may be listening can get a sense of this because I get a sense of the depth of this because I believe that there is a tremendous amount of incorrect assumptions about what you need to learn in let’s say an adviser said Yeah. I don’t know everything I need to know but you know how complicated is really I can’t. I can probably just do a little homework online looking at the Fed site and that would be good. So just to the people that are asking that question and thinking that dance tell us a little bit about some of the actual learning material that they’ll find in the program.

Heather: [00:20:49] The program is going to be comprehensive so it’s going to start with your basic information about student loans student loan type student loan funding sources the differences between them eligible repayment plans ability to postpone payments. So you’re going to start off with a basic understanding of financial aid which is going to be the foundation for any advice that you would provide with student loans because as Heather has has mentioned and always says it is very complex it is very convoluted and it’s not something that’s taught in any other financial courses that tax or financial professionals are taking. So understanding and learning the basics is priority number one because if you can’t decipher the difference between loan types funding sources of loans and the uniqueness of each one of those loans you cannot then interpret that data and make recommendations. Once we lay the foundation in the course work for the basics of financial aid we then start to transition into the different repayment options and that are available to borrowers and the benefits that these repayment options can have.

Jantz: [00:22:00] And we can contrast that against one another with again the idea of starting to formulate enough of an understanding for the financial advisors so that they can understand the repayment options and effectively communicate the values of the different options for student loan borrowers to their clients and then we take that a step further and start to then implement and educate. How financial advice, tax preparation plays into these repayment options and the effects that financial planning can have been as a benefit as a detriment to different income driven repayment plans or different repayment options for borrowers. And then we take some case studies and do some some examples of the various client situations that have sets of loans and we walk through the decision process that you would make as you look at the options and explain them to the clients as their various choices to make with regards to not just the student loans but how the student loan planning can fit within the tax planning within the retirement planning the education planning and business planning well.

Heather: [00:23:19] You’re too modest because when Janice mentions the case studies I just like to emphasize how really useful they are as a learning tool. You know I know the rules of these programs like the back of my hand can spew them out all day but Janice does a terrific job of demonstrating how to apply these rules in the facts of a given case and he takes us through several typical borrower scenarios of the sort that you’re very likely to see in your practice and really shows you the steps that you need to take to not only determine your client’s options but weigh which of the options is the best result for a client and incorporate all the other fancy finance things you can do to make the plan optimized for a given borrower or family. It’s really good stuff.

Jantz: [00:24:32] Yeah I think what most financial advisors and taxpayers don’t understand is the amount of control that the borrowers and indirectly their advisors have on the value of the repayment advice and the repayment options based upon what they do and other aspects of their financial and tax planning.

Jantz: [00:24:55] And once advisers learn that they can really take clients that are burdened by their debt and put them in a position where they can be saving at an earlier age you’re getting the magic of compounding interest working on their side, reducing the impact of the student debt and demonstrating the extreme value that this knowledge brings to that individual’s financial plan.

Heather: [00:25:24] Right and that works both ways, Jantz so they can use their knowledge of finance more generally to improve a person’s student loan options and outcomes. And then you can also use the available student loan options to improve other aspects of their financial picture such as you know demonstrating the importance of retirement savings and the added benefit that saving for retirement has to a student loan borrower in that it can in fact reduce their payments both on a monthly basis and in the long term which is really a win win situation.

Larry: [00:26:18] I’m imagining that people listening to this are wanting to understand a little bit more about how the program works because you have both mentioned just a load of different subject matter so Heather I know you were involved in a lot of the presentations as well. Can you go over just how the program works, the modules how what a learner if you will work through the system to get all this information.

Heather: [00:26:50] Sure. Well we use a learning management system of the sort that universities leverage online. And so a a user a student can watch presentations that include visual aids and voiceovers and along with that will be accompanying materials resources additional readings forms links to critical websites and the like. And then after each subject is fully taught and the student has a chance to review additional materials or work through it at their own pace. There are also knowledge checks for each of the subjects so they can go through and ensure that they’re taking away the key points. And there’s an opportunity to interact and post questions and discussion points with the instructors Jantz and I. And then there’s also a review for preparation for the examination because we do also. To provide a rigorous proctored final exam so that the advisors can demonstrate their knowledge and then we can confidently designate them as having this student loan specialty as having the education the experience the licensure requirements as well as the student loans specific training and have demonstrated their competency and the exam requires advisors to analyze several real life student loan situations and show that they can do the necessary calculations and that they understand the rules including the exceptions and tricky parts that are so present in a system like this.

Larry: [00:29:25] I’m sure a lot of advisors may be curious. Is this an accredited course. And are there other things like CEO credits available?

Jantz: [00:29:41] The coursework and the exam and everything with regards to the designation is offered in partnership or under the California state university system with our partner school Humboldt State University so this is a college level coursework a 400 level class and that is transferable to any almost any school across the country.

Jantz: [00:30:08] With that the CFP Board has realized the value of the educational content that we’re providing and they have granted twenty three hours of continuing education credit for CFD which is nearly two years worth of seed credit just for going through this designation. In addition to that most states provide 30 hours of CPE continuing education credits for CPD and FINRA recognizes the designation as an accredited designation and that is primarily due to the distress distribution of the educational content again through the California state university system with our partner school Humboldt State University.

Larry: [00:30:55] How long would it take someone to go through this this course and actually complete the designation and I understand that that’s somewhat subjective because it depends on the time someone applies himself to it but can you have some kind of guideline for our listeners as to how much time it would take.

Jantz: [00:31:14] Yes of course with the university is a two unit semester long course so they should expect to put in the amount of time and effort that they would have put into a traditional semester long college course. Of course as you mentioned advisors have varying time schedules and some of them can complete the content sooner than others if they have more free time. But to give them an idea they should be looking at the six month requirement that they read that they have to complete the coursework in from the time that they that they enroll in it and they should expect to be putting in the number of hours that they would put into a traditional college course.

Larry: [00:31:57] Once someone is completed they get their designation now what what what’s next what’s beyond this. So are there updates additional material added? What what’s beyond that first first designation of award the.

Jantz: [00:32:12] Once someone is designated a certified student loan professional. They are required to annually complete a continuing education exam and they have ongoing access to the educational materials lectures and resources that they experience as they go through the material and we update that material regularly. As regulations change laws change or as the user experience has leads us to additional questions or answers that we have. So we’re constantly providing new material into that coursework that is available to the CSLP and each year they are required to do a non-proctored short quiz if you will in order to maintain their CSLP designation. The intent is to make sure that these people holding themselves out to the public who are helping with student loans are we could ensure that they are knowledgeable on the subject matter.

Jantz: [00:33:18] To date on most recent developments and changes and are still able to effectively provide solutions to student loan borrowers.

Heather: [00:33:26] And also Jantz when someone achieves their designation and become certified they can put themselves out as such and can use that as a marketing tool so that prospective clients know that they have this skill set and not only do they say they do but they have been reviewed and vetted and have demonstrated their skill in the area of student loans. So it really does provide the consumers the borrowers information they can use to identify the best advisors for student loan issues and from the advisor perspective that can be a valuable way of differentiating yourself and calling attention to the services that you or your firm can offer too. For example young professionals or others with student loan issues.

Larry: [00:34:45] Okay. Well my next question then is it sounds like this is tremendously important that a person who has a student loan speak with someone who is knowledgeable otherwise they’re potentially they’re risking a lot of their financial future by potentially paying a lot more than they should. So how does one find a CSLP?

Jantz: [00:35:11] So I agree with you Larry that those borrowers really need to make sure that if they’re seeking advice they’re getting qualified advice. And one of the points we make in the early part of the course is that AICPA is recently done a study where they found that 81 percent of people with student loans are delaying their professional or personal financial decisions due to their student loans and getting qualified advice can help them progress through the natural expectations of their financial and personal life without having this or mitigating the burden of student debt on those decisions.

Jantz: [00:35:52] So it’s imperative that those with student loans do work with CSLP and if there is a borrower out there that is looking for a qualified adviser they can head to our nonprofit’s Web site at L.A. Institute dot org and access our database of advisors there where they can search by state or by name and see all the advisors who hold this designation and what other services and or licenses they hold whether they’re also certified financial planners or certified public accountants or hold insurance licenses. Well you can see not just that they hold the designation but what other services or areas of financial services they work in there’s a student loan borrower who’s listening to this.

Larry: [00:36:43] Is there anything else that you would recommend.

Heather: [00:36:46] Well yeah so I would say all student loan borrowers should bear in mind that there are many different options for managing student loans and a qualified advisor can review your repayment plan and not just your plan but your payment amount whether you should be paying more than what to do or not a qualified advisor can also help you maximize benefits like forgiveness provisions and analyze the importance of for example tax filing status and how that relates to student loans. So I’d say it’s really more a matter of what people shouldn’t do before getting advice. I think it’s not smart to consolidate unless you know for sure that it makes sense for you because it can be the wrong decision for some borrowers.

Heather: [00:37:52] I would also say the same when it comes to whether to switch repayment plans. There are times when that’s the perfect thing to do. But other times when it can have unintended negative consequences such as capitalization of unpaid interest.

Heather: [00:38:12] So and I’d also caution borrowers to be really careful there. Companies coming online every day that put themselves out as you know debt relief companies or you know consolidation services. They they advertise things like you know get Obama’s loan forgiveness now and such. And many of these outfits are not qualified not licensed not trained and are instead trying to take advantage of people with student loans and charge money for things that any borrower can do for his or herself for free. Like fill out an electronic consolidation application it. Another thing really worth avoiding is refinancing any federal student loans into the private refinancing market that can result in losing unique and valuable consumer benefits. And then I guess finally Larry I would mention that even people who are situated on their loans and have made well-informed decisions all along it’s wise to review it periodically and particularly when any major life changes occur like you know getting married or changing jobs or becoming divorced or having a change in income a plan is is only as good as the assumptions that underlie the plan. So as things change over time it makes sense to kind of re-evaluate and see whether there’s any thing that should be changed or tweet is.

Larry: [00:40:07] Is there any ideal candidate to take this in other words should this be taken by all financial advisors or or early career or….Who’s who’s most likely, who’s best suited for this program?.

Jantz: [00:40:23] I would say that this is something that’s should be taken by any tax or financial adviser who is practicing today and bringing on new clients. While the issue of student loans is often looked at as a younger person problem almost to 60 percent almost two thirds of the loans outstanding are held before to borrowers between the ages of 25 and 49 the fastest growing demographic with regards to the rate of student loan increase. Are those borrowers older than 50 years old.

Jantz: [00:41:05] So this is quickly becoming a problem that is being seen across the demographic scale of age so more financial advisers more tax preparers are going to have to recognize that they are not going to be able to ignore student loan repayment going forward as they are going to be running into clients that have this and they are going to have to make the decision that they’re either going to ignore these clients or prospective clients or they’re going to have to make sure that they are trained and educated in order to provide effective quality advice to them. Our board has set the designation requirements for prospective candidates for CSLP to those that have to have certain educational backgrounds so they either have to have two years of industry experience in financial services or a bachelor’s degree or greater in business finance or economics. And they also must hold a license in a regulated field of financial services. So we do that so that consumers know that the individuals they are working with and those holding the designation are not just providing advice about student loans and are actually capable and licensed and regulated in such a manner to provide comprehensive advice about student loans and how it affects other aspects of financial planning.

Heather: [00:42:38] I can’t go an hour without being contacted by borrowers looking for a recommendation for who they can hire to assist them with this information. And there’s over one point four trillion dollars in outstanding student loan debt and that’s not going to change any time soon. Jantz can correct me if I’m misstating it but I think it’s 1 in 4 households have student loan debt and it’s becoming more and more common. As we continue to shift away from state supported access to higher education and we continue to transfer in to really a debt based system of higher education becomes more and more true that only the most wealthy families can pay cash for education. And it’s in a virtually unheard of for someone to leave a professional program such as medical school or law school without a substantial amount of student loan debt.

Jantz: [00:43:57] Yeah the numbers that I’ve seen Heather is that 17 percent almost 18 percent of the population older than 18 has student loans. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s at least 25 percent of households that have student loans. And as I mentioned before the issue has been changing over time. The age at which people are paying off their student loans are holding student debt is getting older and older on average. And what we’re now starting to see is that many people are starting to take out loans for their children’s education before they’ve even completed paying off the loans for their own education. Also we’ve had just changes in the employment market where employers are incentivizing individuals to shift their educational requirements throughout the career their careers requiring they go back to school and get advanced degrees or change their specific area of focus. So we’re seeing this issue of student debt change and become a Democrat a changing demographic where it’s not only those 25 to 49 we’re also starting to see it creep up into the later years as well. Also a huge component for most advisory firms out there is that they look at their population and historically they have been providing their service to high net worth individuals. Those have accumulated assets but what they’re seeing is that their client base is becoming an aging client base and many firms are.

Jantz: [00:45:31] Actively exploring ways in which they can start to attract younger clients because beginning this year there is a huge wealth transfer that is expected to happen as much as 30 trillion with a T dollars are expected to be inherited from the Baby Boomer Generation to Generation X and Generation Y. And that is going to be a huge transfer of assets not just for generationally but from institution to institution.

Jantz: [00:46:00] And there is a great opportunity for firms that want to establish relationships with Generation X and Generation Y to leverage their student loan repayment advice to take advantage of those relationships to foster those relationships and be in a position to manage those assets as they are inherited from the Baby Boomer generation.

Jantz: [00:46:26] The number one reason why a advisory firm loses assets once the once those assets are transferred to the next generation is because that inheriting clients already has a relationship with a financial professional. So outside of the direct value that it could provide to firms by incorporating this in the services that they offer there is also a huge opportunity to increase assets over time with the inherited assets that Generation X and Generation Y are set to receive.

Larry: [00:47:06] So it sounds like there’s there’s tremendous opportunity in an underserved market and also for building long term relationships that may in fact start just based on advising about the student loans.

Jantz: [00:47:22] Yeah I think it’s clear that if you’re dealing with anyone under 50 years old it’s more than likely the number one priority that they’re going to want a solution to is their student debt.

Larry: [00:47:33] Ok. OK. We covered a lot of ground and I think I’ll say that in the next podcast we’re going to dig deeper into some of the actual cases to give our listeners an idea about just the depth of material and some of the situations that they would encounter and how the CSLP program can certainly help them build a better quality relationship. So I’ll ask you both. Is there anything else that you’d really like to add to this session today.

Heather: [00:48:08] I guess I would just say to the financial advisers out there that if you’re interested in really helping people who need your expertise this can be a terrific opportunity for you. The information is complicated but it’s quite interesting and yes I’m a nerd and Jantz is an even bigger nerd than me which is kind of amazing right Jantz. But it’s it’s it’s really good stuff that it’s super rewarding because your clients’ experience a tremendous amount of stress around these issues and they just want someone they can trust who can explain their options to them and help them get a plan for success. And so we’ve created a really cool course of study that will enhance your knowledge so much and enable you to be confident in your ability to do a great job for student loan clients.

Jantz: [00:49:25] Yet it’s something that when you start helping people with this issue it’s almost something that’s addictive because you’ll see people that will come into your office crying, unwilling to even look at their balances, fearful as to the situation that they’re in sometimes wishing they had never gone to school at all to begin with and the relationships that you create through providing them an exit from this issue that they have and providing them solutions and giving them the hope and expectations that this is not going to inhibit the rest of their life that they’re going to be able to still have the future that they wanted when they enrolled in school.

Jantz: [00:50:13] So it’s something that outside of being a great business opportunity is something that as a person is why we all got into this business is to be able to help people. And and this is the single most important aspect and single biggest benefit and reward I’ve ever seen in my career of helping people with this problem.

Larry: [00:50:38] So until the next time. Thanks, everybody for listening. And be sure to visit the Web site of the company at CSLAInstitute.org

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