The material was last review in 2024. Since many changes have been made to tax law an attempt to update the class material after material changes would be appropriate. Class is very good except it is outdated.

This course is more suitable for a tax professional than an investment advisor. I didn't learn anything relevant to my practice.

Thank you to your staff that assisted in navigating the website to maximize my course order!

The definitions and then examples of the schemes were good. The tax form examples excellent.

ABSOLUTELY LOVED THE AUDIO READ FEATURE.

This course seemed like it was better suited for a CPA rather than a financial advisor. Still good info.

Great information.

Much of the course appears to be tax code detailed - more appropriate for a CPA than a financial advisor.

as a repeat customer it does take a while to find courses that I have not taken before...

As just an IAR and not a tax attorney, I think it got too much into the details on the IRS loss claim amounts.

excellent presentation

very professional

Good course

There was a lot of information covered in this course. Information should have been read at a slower pace and broken up into more slides.

greeeat

Very interesting and appropriately designed overview course - well done!

seemed to be more suitable for a tax professional

Very thorough but can be time consuming. It's probably related to how many credits/hours for each course. All in all, good. Thanks.

Good detailed information about some of the past ponzi schemes. Glad I don't have to deal with these tax issues

This course had very little to do with the activities of an RIA or an IAR. Very, very few investment advisors are also EAs or are qualified to give tax advice.

it took almost 2 hours!!

thanks for making it simple

Would be better if read by an actual person

too much information i will never use

interesting case studies

Too long and difficult for almost no credit hours

There were so many interesting examples in the course material that I'm keeping the PDF as a reference point! This was pretty fun to learn about--though hopefully I'll never run into a Ponzi scheme and need it!

good lord that was a VERY long and detailed CE for the amount of credit gained.

The course took far to many hours to complete for the amount of CE credit

I was stressing out over the new IAR requirements and after wasting hours searching elsewhere, I found you website made it clear and easy. If you could provide a service to keep me notified of all my continuing license requirements across various agencies, that would be great... I mean personalized and flexible.

too long

Course easy to follow and informative.

This course was a little too heavy on tax code discussion for an IAR as we are not allowed to give tax advice.

Thank you.

IMO, the credits (hours) conferred a for successful pass grade bear no relation to the the time required to study the material. I will download/print my future courses and actively 'open book' for testing whenever possible.

Material was not relevant to a financial advisor, more so to a tax professional.

mandatory!

Loved the content. Relevant and interesting.

Please proofread the coursework. There are spelling and grammatical errors, especially in the ethics with seniors component.

I think some tax preparer oriented quatins are included in the practice questions...not sure why

All Positive

Excellent review of Ponzi

the ponzi scheme course is unnecessarily complicated.

Best feature of any course is sped-up audio playback.

I am just confused by this course content for IAR’s. This is so geared for tax professionals not investment professionals. I enjoyed b/c of my CFP background but I am not even taking for that CE. It is for IAR CE and not really related as geared for tax professionals and even addressed tax professionals in course directly.

All good

Thank You!

Oh my goodness was this boring...

The time of 1 hour did not seem like an accurate amount of time as it took me longer.

The process with Lincoln Investment was difficult. I could not get to the required CE without help.

Too many trick questions

The course had very information that applies to my role as a financial advisor aside from potential waring signs that I could provide to a person considering such an investment with those attributes.

Much of this course was designed for accountants that deal with the IRS and IRS forms, and even makes mention of it! However, this is a CE course for investment advisers - not tax preparers - and investment advisers should never answer tax questions for their clients, but refer them to their CPA's. Ridiculous!

This course was included in CE intended for IAR requirements - it's really more appropriate for CPAs and tax-preparers. There's little change I'll need to understand specific deductibility of ponzi theft losses.

As in my previous answers, the information I already knew provided a very good review, and the new material was very interesting and helpful.

The use of case studies The use of so many casestudies made o It harder to listen to the audio.

Your content is very clear and concise and the tests are short. Very nice

It seemed there was too much emphasis on the tax rulings not on recognizing actual schemes. If I had gone through entire course before testing it would have exceed the 1/2 hour of credit. I have now done 2 of your courses and find the time excessive for the credits given.

Try to review and correct the course for the obvious AI narration errors. Rev was one time expressed as Reverend. Other obvious errors were identified as well.

The voice was obviously computer generated and had a lot of run on sentences that were sometimes difficult to follow. I like the idea of the voice, but I found it to be too robotic without appropriate pauses to let me think for a moment. I eventually stopped using the voice and just read the material.

At least you could navigate enrollment and find the coarse you need.

This course is interesting, but is it clearly intended and appropriate for tax preparers rather than financial advisors.

All good!

Knowledge based. Some things I did not know before.

this course spent unnecessary emphasis on one tax implication for loss recovery which financial advisors should not be involved in rendering

the wording was unfortunate and the audio was so computerized it was not useful. reading was better but it could have been written better. i wanted to learn this subject and may choose continuing education elsewhere to truly understand the tax code

Great CE - learned a lot

Seemed longer that one hour's worth of material.

The material was very informative. i finally have a grasp of what a Ponzi scheme really is and does. The IRS procedures are confusing and not surprising some or most go to court. Seems the victims are victimized again.

Thank you for your service

These modules and IAR CE suck! Stupid human tricks 101

This was longer than 1 hour. I don't think you needed to include all that content. I don't need to be an expert. Get to the point. Not so thorough.

Details on IRS determination of basis for ponzi skills was too much for FA - FA should consult tax professional for these matters regardless.

good format - thanks!

Multimedia would improve the course showing the math used to calculated outcomes.

I felt this course is not that beneficial as if we encounter a client in this situation we are always told to refer then to their tax advisor.

The real life examples are very useful. Thank you

That was not applicable at all! worst CE ever in 30 years!

I'm taking this course as a financial professional. However, all of the tax implications reviewed in the content of the course made me feel as if I were a tax expert, which I am not.

this coarse did not apply to me as an investment professional

Thank you.

this was much more technical than expected, very very good

This course should be worth more than 1 credit. To thoroughly study this material is more that 1 hour. Worth Min 2 CE credit.

Very Professional

Good job!

Interesting information -- a lot of things I did not know about previously. Well written and clear.

Excellent material to watch for red flags.

Great, updated content -- I learned a lot, and am glad that the Sam Bankman-Fried case was included.

Too long and complex for the # of hours

This was one of the most interesting CE courses I have ever taken!

pre-test qoestions are extremely helpful to clarify and reinforce knowledge

This course seemed a little long for the material needed to know or learn, and too much datail. The stories were a bit in-depth. Course could've been a bit more stright-forward and shorter I think. People (agents and advisors) cannot recall IRS tax codes and laws as applied to certain situations all that well. I did score 100%, but guessed on one or two of them regarding the codes or laws.

Timely and relevant content presented with clarity and cogency, thank you!

All of the course take longer than than indicated if you read or listen to all of the material.

your service is of high quality and at a fair price

Very long and involved content

I have not studied this material before. This was an interesting topic on relevant information with the investment advisory field of work. I learned a lot.

It would be helpful if the VoiceOver was an actual person instead of AI. When a page is 10 minutes long and you want to rewind the voice, if you click to scrub backwards it often takes you all the way back to the beginning of the page instead of a minute or two backwards as intended. This has happened during multiple courses.

tax treatment of ponzi losses is beyond the scope of learning for a registered rep. this course is half for a CPA and half relevant for an RR

way too much in depth tax information and background for a 1 credit class on Ponzi schemes

You made it interesting.

All good

Good information about how to help clients capture losses from investments that went south in Ponzi schemes, good lessons for firms and reps to do due diligence on the products they allow.

I thought it was alot of detailed information for one hour of training. maybe it should be 1.5 or even 2 hours. The content was well developed and some of it interesting to read.

very good overall

This course took more that 1 hour to do and I've been doing these for many years. Maybe I am too cautious and thorough, but it's really suitable for 1.5 hours credit.

Thank You!

Thank you

all good

Read It To Me Audio greatly enhances the courses over courses that I have taken in the past but would be substantially more engaging if it were read by an actual person as opposed to an AI-generated computer voice.

Good material and examples. Confused on a reference in the material about being tax preparers and not financial professionals. I hope I signed up for the right IAR CEs.

Good examples of past ponzi schemes.

Your site and classes are far superior to others I've been on. Thank you.

grateful

This material was very detailed and had many matters I will review again. Thorough presentation and examples were quite helpful.

You made this way more difficult than necessary. Your questions are way to technical and not practical. For example, why do we need to know the calculation of the safe harbor? Out of all the questions that can be asked, you can do better.

Liked real world examples.

I could never give such tax advice to a client. It seems the tax portion was a bit much.

Great experience

obviously this was intended for CPAs, not Financial Advisors in the securities industry (series 7 and 65, 66 FAs)

I'm not sure why this specific course would be offered to investment professionals. From your own course material "Most of us are qualified in the field of taxation, not in the fields of financial planning and investment." - yet you're offering to financial planners/investment professionals for CE.

Very interesting cases! I learned a lot!

easy to follow and understand

A little too technical, especially regarding IRS regulations and procedures.

I like that I can mute the audio for study at my own pace.

Courses are a bit long for credit hours. I listened at 1.5 speed and it took nearly an hour!

the content of this class has nothing relevant to financial advising. This is a CPA class.

The TD Bank and Umpqua Bank examples were completely interesting and the course was excellent. Thank you.

The content in this course was both confusing and irrelavent.

WEB CE is the best

Ponzi scheme course seemed to be aimed at tax professionals, not at IARs. Information was very interesting and relevant, but a similar version of this that did not discuss how to give tax advice would be better suited for IARs.

While I found the Ponzi scheme stories and info very interesting, I don't understand why the tax portions were included. This is a course for IAR CE. We are not tax professionals and we are not allowed to offer tax advice. It is interesting, and good to know this, but I dont feel it should be included on the quiz (ex: IRS laws, safe harbor, calculaiton of losses, etc).

The course took far longer than 90 minutes to complete, it was good content but compared to the credited hours did not seem correct

My eyes glazed over when it was talking about IRS revenue codes. Not really relevant and it didn't help me with the final exam. The case studies however were interesting.

Too complex in explanation, could be much shorter, not interested in details of the tax law

course took too long for a one hour CE credit.

more audio and video please

I took this class as part of the requirement by FINRA for Financial Advisers (IAR). Why did you provide so much materials on Taxation. As an Investment Advisor Rep, we are not allowed to give tax advice !!!

This course had way too much tax code in the middle of the course that was extremely confusing. I am a finanical professional and still didnt understand 95% of it. For 1 hour course, its way too dense for a non tax professional

I found it difficuult to fully inderstand the IRS rulngs due to the legallize of the verbiage

The robotic audio track made the content difficult to understand.

Although I liked the audio version I DID NOT like listening to the obviously AI generated voice. How about using a real human being and giving them a job? I will look to use a different course provider in the future.

Very clear and easy to use.

interestinghistorical court cases btnotnecessrry toouch mat

interestinghistorical court cases btnotnecessrry toouch mat

A few of the tax questions were confusing for us Non-Accountants.

These are so much fun!

Thank you!

Thank you. Overall it was fine. Definitely not excellent like I normally do for you.

Awesome!

This was taken under the new Calif IAR requirement for an Investment advisor not a tax preparer.

I thought this course got a little too deep into taxes

I thought there was a little too much emphasis in this course on tax code provisions . That section seems more appropriate for CE for CPA's. For investment advisors, i thought it was excessive. The rest of the course was excellent.

I learned important info. Thank you.

this was more for tax professionals than financial planners or investment advisors...

Interesting material, it kept my attention!

Great course, helped me understand the tax implications of Ponzi Schemes as a financial professional pursuing their CE.

Very detailed and in-depth analysis

This was not an easy course!

Very informative information and interesting cases of Ponzi schemes, along with learning IRS guidelines on declaring the losses.

long and confusing.

Was very informative and brought more insight

even better if it was clear what courses were not repeats but option to fulfill requirements

I liked the concise and focused nature of the course. However, to improve the experience, I would recommend including more interactive elements, case studies, and scenarios to engage learners and provide deeper understanding. Additionally, videos or animations could help explain complex concepts in a more engaging way.

The question on the exam were for Investment Advisors we are not CPA.

The Casey case was mistakenly called the Carey case in the practice exam for part 4

Good course

I was shocked to read about such blatant fraud that the financial institutions got away with while people's lives were destroyed.

Good examples given. Explained schemes well and provided all pertinent information

Very interesting lesson and I loved that you included case studies of the different Ponzi Schemes so we could see real life examples of how and where this happens.

the mechanical computerized reading leaves a lot to be desired! It reads acronyms incorrectly, the syntax is wrong and it even reads a 'period' at the end of a sentence. You can do better!

Good course!!!

I thought this course had a bit too much "income tax treatment" stuff. Also, even if a theft loss is allowed, under the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, many people wind up NOT itemizing anyway

Enjoyed the actual Ponzi Scheme examples to pull together the topics discussed.

The AI Generated Voice was not good and did not follow human voice rhythm, which made it hard to follow. Also course was written for CPA/tax professionals not investment IARs, which is what it purported to be.

This was a long and complex course deserving more than 1 credit. It deserved 2 credits at a minimum.

This was a 1 hour course. Just listening to it takes well over 1 hour. Also I'm an IAR. this seemed to be directed more to a tax professional, not a financial advisor. Way too much tax jargon and tax law. Just as tax professionals shouldn't offer investment advice, i don't think we need to know the minutia that was provided in this course

This is more tailored to tax professionals.

I got lost in the woods on this one. Too much detail about things that are not totally relevant to a Financial Advisor, from my opinion - focus was on tax issues...

This topic felt unnecessary. I don't understand why I would need to know how losses from a ponzi scheme are treated by the IRS.

Course content is not something I find very helpful. Examples of Ponzi schemes are okay but diving into IRS policies and tax laws are something I will never use.

Content is very dry but important to review. Maybe could keep our attention by adding some visuals/make it more interactive.

This course was designed for accountants. It actually referenced this in the course. The accounting and IRS content didn't pertain to an insurance producer's continuing education needs.

Keep up the good work.