If advisors want business owners as clients, then they should retain some knowledge about business valuation, argue the founders of an online certification program.
Philadelphia-based BizEquity announced the launch of the Business Valuation Institute, a web-based certification course that will provide financial advisors with a “Certified Business Valuation Analyst” (CBVA) credential.
“Advisors do want to serve the business owner and entrepreneurial community, and this rounds out their ability to do so,” says Mike Carter, founder and CEO of BizEquity. “This is not product training on BizEquity. Some of this is not new, there have been programs for certified business valuation before, but they weren’t focused on the advisor community.”
The course, designed for financial professionals, will consist of principles and applications of business valuation, both classical approaches and the ARM Private Firm valuation approach. Participants will be exposed to online valuation resources, and complete a final case study Valuation Capstone Project. The course will include financial planning applications within its curriculum, like applying business valuations within succession and insurance planning.
The Institute is launching as a partnership between BizEquity, itself an online valuation service, and the Business Enterprise Institute, a provider of exit-planning education and plan design for business advisors.
“Business valuation is the foundation of every exit plan to help a business owner understand where they are today and where they will need to go,” said Jared Johnson, CEO of the Business Enterprise Institute, in a released comment. “Advisors who have a strong understanding of business value are able to provide owners with a clearer path to their future while helping them achieve their goals.”
The platform will be hosted by MassiveU, an online learning portal.
Currently, there are only 7,800 certified valuation professionals globally, notes Carter, who argues that advisors are perfectly positioned to not only provide business valuations to their clients, but also to employ those valuations within clients’ financial plans.
In the past, credentials for business valuations like the CBVA were only available through a handful of certification bodies, costly, and required travel to receive education in a physical classroom setting, says Carter.
“We realized there was a way to do this better, faster and cheaper,” says Carter. “If advisors want another arrow in their quiver and understand valuations to the point where they can deliver one and speak to it, a certification like this one gets them that arrow.”