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School of Business will offer new Financial Services program

Mohawk to open new Centre of Excellence

Hamilton's Mohawk College intends to open an Insurance and Financial Services Centre of Excellence on its Fennell campus.

DAVID CHILTON

[ 2007-07-04 ]

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COLARCO
Mohawk College, School of Business

Hamilton's Mohawk College intends to open an Insurance and Financial Services Centre of Excellence on its Fennell campus.

To be located in the college's School of Business, students will have the option of two two-year diploma programs and, eventually, a one-year certificate program.

The diploma Insurance course has been taught at Mohawk for more than 30 years and has intakes in September and January.

The second diploma program, Financial Services, is brand new and will accept students for the first time in September with another intake in January.

The certificate program, Insurance - Technical Services Representative, gets under way in Fall 2008.

The Centre will be housed in a renovated wing of the School of Business. The $2.15-million facility will offer multimedia "smart labs," a dedicated library, learning and resource centre and The Bert Hares boardroom, a state-of-the-art, multi-purpose space for meetings, seminars and workshops. School of Excellence renovations will begin next May with the official opening slated for September 2008.

Julie Ryan, co-ordinator of the Insurance program, says college staff have been working on the new course for more than a year. "The financial services sector is growing and the demand (for qualified staff) is growing rapidly."

Deborah Calarco agrees with her colleague's assessment. Calarco, the budget and operations officer for the School of Business, says she expects the college to fill every available slot in the Financial Services program, although the final number of students to be accepted isn't yet fixed and applications are still being taken.

All Insurance and Financial Services students will take a common first semester, Ryan says, and will begin their respective specialization beginning in their second semester in January.

Following graduation, if their experience is anything like that of the Insurance diploma students, the Financial Services graduates can have their pick of the jobs. There's a 100% employment rate for her insurance students, Ryan says, noting during an on-campus "Industry Night" in March, there were 23 employers on hand with 80 jobs available for 50 grads.

ACCREDITATION EXAMS

The new Financial Services program will prepare students for careers in financial services, investment banking and insurance. Following the successful completion of the program, Calarco says graduates qualify to write the Certified Financial Planner accreditation exams administered by the Financial Planners Standards Council of Canada.

A further benefit of the program is that students will complete the necessary course work to hold a mutual funds licence and to write the Life License Qualification course.

In both the Insurance and Financial Services programs the gender split is about even. Ryan puts her classes at about 50-50, and Calarco says, based on the applications received so far, "It's leaning towards men, but it's not substantially higher."

Tuition fees for both programs are the same at about $1,900 a year.

Salaries following graduation are similar as well, at an average of about $35,000 a year, although with a few years experience there's nowhere to go but up. And there's something else for Hamiltonians -- permanent or temporary -- to consider: "The closer to Toronto you are the bigger the salaries, obviously," Ryan says.