IAQFP Suggestions to the CFP Board for Joining in Uniting the Profession

Last Updated: 7/04

We hold that the CFP Board does many fine things for which we commend them, however, changes are needed in areas that will benefit our Members, fellow professionals, our developing Financial Planning Profession, and the public we serve, and it is among the purposes of IAQFP.org to point out and work for at least the following much needed changes:

1. bring about open nominations and elections of all voting members of the CFP Board of Governors, by the community of CFP^® Certificants.
2. have the CFP Board require that every voting member of the CFP Board must be either a CFP^® Certificant or an active QFP. Non-Certificants may serve on the CFP Board, but without voting rights.
3. have the CFP Board cease and desist from referring to themselves, or having CFP^® Certificants or the public think of them as, “Financial Planning’s Professional Regulatory Organization”. What they are is owners of the CFP^® mark(s), now a federally registered certification mark, and while it is true that they regulate the use of their mark(s), and are technically “a regulatory organization” over their CFP^® Certificants use of those marks, they certainly have no such claim to make over the entire Financial Planning Profession or community of financial planning professionals. Their use implies they regulate the entire profession, and in doing so misleads, and we want them to stop this misleading usage in favor of a more clear statement and position.
4. have the CFP Board publicly state they will cease and desist from any and all efforts at becoming the SRO (Self Regulatory Organization), and will instead put their resources and efforts into helping serve the needs of their “certificants”, improving & distinguishing “Financial Planning” as a profession, and promoting the CFP^® mark & CFP^® Certificants important role in the Financial Planning profession.
5. have the CFP Board bring an end to Practice Standards and modify the present CFP^® Code of Ethics (that are essentially indistinguishable from Practice Standards), in favor of a more general, and less public “Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct”, substantially equal to that which applies to all IAQFP / QFP.

   The CFP Board has openly stated that their need and reason to trademark their CFP^® designation, to have Practice Standards and to have their particular version of a “Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility”, is to better ensure their becoming an SRO, the SRO of financial planners and/or the Financial Planning Profession. These “Standards” subject planners, and more specifically CFP^® Certificants, to substantially heightened degrees of legal liability that are not only largely unwanted, but are also not understood well by either planners, groups, and certainly not clients of planners. Lawyers understand them quite well, however, and this is the danger to all parties in their otherwise very unnecessary existence.

6. have the CFP Board require all persons, including related professionals like CPA’s & Attorneys who may wish to challenge the subject matter, to first have to take the full study curriculum, along with any related modular exams, prior to any “Comprehensive Exam”.
7. have the CFP Board formally grant use of the CFP^® designation to qualified ChFC’s (i.e. those who have met the minimum 3 year experience requirement, since the CFP Board has stated, in writing to our Group, that ChFC’s have already met seemingly equivalent education & examination requirements of CFP^® certification). Click HERE for additional details.
8. bring an end to the CFP Board required special 2 hour Code of Ethics course and in connection with point “e” above – the adoption of a newly revised and simplified Code.
9. have the CFP Board encourage & require all CFP^® Certificants to complete continuing education courses in all 6 areas of the financial planning curriculum each 2 year renewal cycle (i.e. Overview of the 6-Step Financial Planning Process; Risk Management; Investments; Taxation; Retirement Plans & Employee Benefits; Estate Planning).
10. have the CFP Board reposition the CFP^® mark in the pubic eye (i.e. what it “means or represents”), as well as through its approved educators & CFP^® Certificants, as a “generalist” and pre-requisite for those who wish to practice within the Financial Planning profession, thereby better allowing for and also encouraging “specialization’s” (i.e. a “certified” financial planner with specialization in Estate Planning, or Investments, or Insurance, etc.).
11. have the CFP Board change its basic tone & relationship to its Certificants to help end the attitude of confrontation & mistrust, in hopes of bringing about a much more constructive, sharing, helpful & productive atmosphere between the CFP Board & Certificants.
12. have the CFP Board correct their misleading definition of the term ‘ CFP^® practitioner’, since they define such practitioners as Certificants who have taken “an extra step”, which is erroneous, since all Certificants have taken the exact same steps. Click HERE for details.
13. have the CFP Board prove they are meaningfully listening to, and acting on the concerns and opinions of CFP^® Certificants, in the acts and decisions they take effecting or regarding Certificants (i.e. to hold them, primarily accountable, to Certificants).
14. have the CFP Board cease and desist from all activities that use compensation, or any other methods, to divide Certificants.
15. have the CFP Board reduce CFP^® Certificant Mark usage fees while also pursuing avenues of increasing Certificants along the lines we have suggested here in regards to ChFC’s.
16. At the present time the CFP Board has transferred all referrals for a CFP^® Certificant to the FPA; however, the FPA only provides referral names to those practicing CFP^® Certificants who are also Members of the FPA, thereby discriminating against thousands of non-FPA CFP^® Certificant Members, as well as other qualified financial planning professionals. Therefore, both the FPA, and the CFP Board who allows them to do so, are discriminating against thousands of equally qualified financial planning professionals. IAQFP stands in opposition to the damage the CFP Board does by not requiring the FPA to also make referrals to Non-Members of the FPA who are also CFP^® Certificants.
17. IAQFP seeks to have the CFP Board pull back the referral function from the FPA entirely unless and until the FPA agrees to list not only FPA Member CFP^® Certificants, but all CFP^® Certificants who are also in the business of providing financial planning services.
18. Have the CFP Board accept all those that we accept under the QFP Designation as equal to CFP^® Certificants, and join IAQFP.org in its unification of the profession under the ideal of: One Profession – One Designation.