New Life/A&S CE Course – Understanding, Analyzing and Interpreting Financial Statements

Mar 7, 2018 | News

4 New Life/A&S CE

Understanding, Analyzing and Interpreting Financial Statements

This course is included as part of your ILS LIFE/A&S Course Subscription

A financial statement provides a record of the financial activities and positions of a business during a period of time. These statements represent a means of communicating a given business’s financial information to different parties who then can base their decisions on the statistics provided. Note that a proper understanding of financial statements is paramount to an individual’s ability to make informed decisions including whether to invest in or grant credit to a business.

In addition, financial statements can help a business owner or shareholder evaluate the performance of the business over a particular period. This is very useful for a business owner since it helps them to evaluate what changes should be made to enhance business processes, or even could be used to determine what bonuses paid to management would be justified

Throughout this course, some basic accounting concepts will be covered that are a prerequisite for you to achieve a proper understanding of financial statements. Accounting is the first language of business and achieving a comprehension of the accounting techniques covered in this course will certainly pay dividends when it comes to interpreting financial statements.

This course covers the following topics:

• • Introduction to Financial Statements
  • Assumptions and Principles of Financial Statements
  • Overview of the 3 Financial Statements
  • Cash Flow Statement
  • Financial Statement Ratio’s
  • Basic Fundamental Analysis
  • Applications for Investing using Financial Statements

Become an ILScorp group member to save even more.

Included as part of the ILScorp Life/A&S CE Subscription.

Access Duration from the Date of Purchase: 6 months
Credit Hours: 4
Credit Type: Life/A&S
Credit #: AIC #47532; MB #29899
Accrediting Provinces: BC, AB, SK, MB, ON

Sample of course material:

Users of Financial Statements

Users of financial statements can broadly be put into two categories: internal users and external users.

Internal Users

These individuals use financial information to plan, organize and run companies. Usually, they work for the company and hold positions such as financial directors, marketing executives, human resource directors and production managers.
Questions these users might ask are:

1. Do we have enough cash to pay our bills?
2. How much should we spend on marketing to maximize profits?
3. What price should we sell our products at to maximize profits?
4. How many people should we hire, or can we afford our existing employees?
5. Which product is the most profitable?

To answer these questions, internal users may seek to compare the profitability of business segments over time, analyze costs and forecast sales for a defined timeframe. The value of undertaking these types of activities is always conditional on the accuracy of the financial statements, and the internal user’s understanding of its components.

External Users

These users are not a part of the business and thereby view the company from a distance. Key examples of these types of users include investors and creditors.

Investors will use the contained financial information to determine whether the business represents a worthwhile investment. Similarly, creditors will use financial information to decide if they should lend money to a company, based on their analysis of whether the company can reasonably be expected to repay its debts or not.

In addition to these two standard examples, other external users include labour unions who use financial statements to decide whether a reporting company is paying employees a fair amount, or potential employees who may use financial statements to evaluate job prospects.

Business Activities Recorded in Financial Statements

Businesses engage in three types of activities: Financing, Investing and Operating. These activities are all recorded on financial statements so that stakeholders can analyze them. We provide a description of each below:

Financing Activities

To operate, a business needs to spend money. There are two ways to raise money: the company can borrow money from creditors (debt financing) or it can sell shares to investors in exchange for cash (equity financing).

Selling shares is less risky than taking on debt. Note that debt holders must be paid back before shareholders; therefore, debt holders have a right to the company’s resources before shareholders. If a company cannot repay its debt, then the company will be liquidated and the debt holders will receive the amount that they are owed. In this situation, once the debt holders are paid, shareholders receive the remaining assets, if any remain.

In contrast, once shares are issued a company is not obligated to repay shareholders for their investment, though they often do so. Many companies pay a shareholder a return on their investment so long as creditors have been paid. These shareholder payments are called dividends. Generally, dividends take the form of cash, but they can be paid through other means such as the granting of additional common stocks to common shareholders.

Investing Activities

Money raised from financing activities may then be invested, which is often the primary reason for raising money. Investing activities involves the purchase of assets to be used for business operations. Assets are resources that the company owns and controls. An asset is purchased to provide an economic benefit to the company.

Examples of assets include computers, machines, equipment, land and vehicles. Together these types of assets are called property, plant and equipment or PPE.   Other examples of assets are intangible assets such as Goodwill. Goodwill is the difference between the prices a company pays for an acquisition and the net value of the acquisitions assets.

Operating Activities

Now that the business has the required assets, it can undertake operations. The company uses the assets it bought to create goods that can be sold to consumers. The cash it receives for these goods is referred to as revenue.
The company also must pay for the materials that go into the production of these goods. These material costs are listed as expenses and often called Cost of Goods Sold.

Summary

1. Financing Activities: the act of borrowing money from lenders or issuing equity to investors so that the cash created can be directed to investing activities.
2. Investing Activities: the purchasing and disposing of assets that are to be used in operating activities.
3. Operating Activities: the day-to-day operations of a business that result in revenues and expenses.

Same Passion. New Address

Jan 1, 2018 | News

ILScorp’s New Location

It’s with great pleasure to let you know that we have relocated to a beautiful and spacious new location.

Our new address is:
Unit #104
1829 Beaufort Avenue
Comox, BC. Canada
V9M 1R9

However, our phone number remains the same at 1-800-404-2211.
Our primary email address is also still the same info@ilscorp.com

Since we first opened our doors in 1991,  our customers loyal business and support is one of the main reasons why we’ve grown so much over the years. We’ve been searching for the ideal location and are happy to tell everyone that we’ve finally found it!

As of November 30, 2017, we are no longer at our Ryan Road address. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have concerning the new location on Beaufort Avenue or our services.

We look forward to working with you at our new address!

Sincerely,

Dana Barr

General Manager
ILScorp
dana@ilscorp.com

ChAD Compulsory Course for 2017

Nov 2, 2017 | News

ChAD Compulsory Course Worth 2 PDUs

Beginning with the 2016-2017 reference period, and continuing thereafter for each reference period, representatives will be obliged to take a compulsory course developed by the ChAD worth 2 PDUs. The general objective of this compulsory course is to address ethical shortcomings. The PDUs earned by taking this course will count towards the 20 compulsory PDUs representatives must earn during each compliance period. They will also count towards the minimum of 3 compulsory PDUs in Compliance.

The 2016-2017 compliance period compulsory course is entitled Focusing on Compliance: Your Duty to Inform, Explain and Advise and will be offered online at the ChAD’s training site, ÉduChAD. The course targets the top reason for complaints over the past four years: failure to properly inform, explain and advise.

To find out more about this compulsory course, please click on its page here​.

Limit on the Number of PDUs Earned After Re-taking the Same Training

Members may earn PDUs for taking the same training a maximum of two times, as long as the training is taken during two different reference periods. A member who has already earned PDUs twice for the same training will not earn any further PDUs if he or she takes this training once again.

Carry-over of Five PDUs

Members who have earned extra PDUs are permitted to transfer up to five PDUs to the following compliance period.
 
 
ChAD Accredited Online Courses
 
 

Cours obligatoire de 2 UFC

À partir de la période de référence 2016-2017, le représentant a l’obligation de suivre chaque période de référence un cours obligatoire de 2 UFC afférentes à une activité de formation élaborée par la ChAD. L’objectif général de ce cours obligatoire est de pallier les lacunes récurrentes observées en déontologie. Les UFC obtenues lors de ce cours seront comptabilisées à même les 20 UFC obligatoires actuelles par période de référence. Elles sont également comptabilisées à même le minimum de 3 UFC obligatoires en Conformité.

Pour la période de référence 2016-2017, le cours obligatoire s’intitule Cap sur la conformité : votre devoir d’informer, d’expliquer et de conseiller. Disponible en ligne sur l’espace de formation ÉduChAD, il cible le premier motif de plainte depuis les quatre dernières années, soit le défaut d’informer, d’expliquer et de conseiller adéquatement.

Consultez la page du cours obligatoire pour en savoir plus.

Avis important : le maintien de votre certificat est conditionnel à la réussite du cours obligatoire.

​Pour conserver votre certificat en vigueur et continuer à exercer comme professionnel en assurance de dommages ou expertise en règlement de sinistres, vous devez compléter toutes vos obligations de formation continue pour la période de référence 2016-2017, y compris celle de réussir le cours obligatoire. Faute de quoi, votre dossier sera transféré à l’Autorité des marchés financiers qui procèdera à la suspension de votre certificat.

Limitation des UFC pour une même formation

Un membre peut accumuler les UFC attribuables à une activité de formation un maximum de deux fois, pourvu qu’elle soit suivie dans des périodes de références différentes. Par conséquent, un membre qui aurait déjà accumulé des UFC pour une même formation deux fois n’obtiendra pas d’UFC s’il la suit de nouveau.

Surplus d’UFC​

Les membres ayant cumulé des UFC en surplus se verront transférer automatiquement jusqu’à concurrence de 5 UFC à la fin de la période de conformité suivante.