Anneli Knight
October 13, 2010
The Australian Securities Exchange is expanding its range of free online courses, giving investors and financial advisers the tools to extend their knowledge base on a range of technical products.
The head of ASX investor education, Tony Hunter, says the recent launch of the online course on interest rate securities and the impending launch of the exchange traded funds course, provide investors with information about how to diversify their portfolios.
While the ASX shares course has remained the most popular, Hunter says investors have been seeking information on a broader range of investment products since the global financial crisis.
Advertisement: Story continues below
''Because of what's happened over the last couple of years, people are less confident about the markets,'' he says. ''They're going back and learning more. It's better to learn before you've invested rather than after you've invested. Unless you understand your products you're not going to get a proper sense of its risks and its benefits.''
It is important to build your knowledge base, Hunter says. ''You need to understand [how the financial products work] before you talk to an adviser so you can ask your adviser proper questions. And if you don't have an adviser, it's even more important because you're your own adviser, so you need to be briefed.''
The ASX has been building its stable of online courses, which now includes shares, options, warrants, ASX-listed CFDs, instalments and futures and, most recently, interest rate securities.
Each course is broken down into a series of 20-minute modules, which can be taken anonymously with no registration required.
The modules have been designed with maximum flexibility so they will suit people of all ages and different levels of comfort within the online environment, Hunter says.
''It is common knowledge that especially younger people tend to surf around - they'll try to work it out themselves before they go back to instructions. A lot of people don't like to be told: 'You start here and finish here.'''
The more technical courses - such as interest rate securities and instalment warrants - have also been useful for financial advisers, Hunter says.
The ASX is encouraging advisers to take these courses and link their clients to them, so they can see what the end user is learning.
The free courses are funded by the ASX development fund for education and Hunter says the organisation made the decision to invest heavily in its online education resources rather than on face-to-face courses so the information is more accessible nationally, including to those in remote and regional areas, and people can take the courses at any time that is convenient to them.
They have had particularly high access levels late at night and during the Christmas holiday period, Hunter says.
The courses are created in-house by the ASX education team and are reviewed by legal and product experts before their launch.
Each module is broken down to include essential pieces of information, with interactive learning exercises and quizzes to reinforce key points.
''The web is a really different way of learning to reading a book,'' Hunter says. ''You really need to have far less content and make it clean, uncluttered and pithy. Once the slides were done, I spent most of my time working out what we can take out rather than what we can leave in.''
In addition to these online courses, the ASX investor education area provides downloadable podcasts of the free education seminars it holds in Melbourne and Sydney each month.
The ASX courses and details of the monthly investor hour seminars are at:
asx.com.au/resources/education.
http://www.asx.com.au/resources/personal_investors/index.htm
http://www.asx.com.au/resources/education/classes/shares/course_09/index.html
http://www.smh.com.au/money/investing/making-investors-more-savvy-20101012-16gon.html
No comments:
Post a Comment