CFP Board, A Wrong Choice for SRO – A Problematic History Continues Underreported

June 14, 2004

Dear Editor,

Your excellent article: “Over the Top” (Allen Plummer, June 2004) points out the position of the CFP^® designation today and describes mistakes and problems created by the board in their journey. Unfortunately, many important issues and even more important details are not covered in this and other such articles.

The CFP Board to which you refer differs greatly from the original CFP^® organization. All of the mistakes have occurred since the new group started in the mid eighties. This is the group that for years denied the fact that they were seeking the position of SRO and that the reason for trade marking the designation (which has caused numerous problems and continues to do so) was specifically to pursue the SRO. Can we entrust SRO authority to an organization that repeatedly misrepresents itself and relies on such a “back-room” philosophy?

Their initial, badly constructed practice standards, were developed in that back room and they attempted to force them down our throats without time for discussion. When this writer exposed these facts over 80% of CFP^® leaders objected vehemently and the Board was forced to delay the standards until time and discussion could at least make them intelligent. The ridiculous reasons that the Board provided at the time for the need for the standards was finally replaced years later with the admission that they were another requirement in order to become the SRO.

Unreasonable monetary charges forced on innocent certificants to protect themselves from trumped-up accusations by the public and the Board still plague CFP^® certificants today.

Mr. Plummer quotes the Board’s definition of a “practitioner” as a certificant who is “actively engaged in providing financial planning services” as distinguished from a certificant who, though working in the financial field, does not have such clients as though the latter individual was somehow inferior. Indeed the Board in the last couple of years, after Paul League, QFP, CFP^® exposed their back room pending trademark on the “Practitioner” label, finally stopped denying that the application existed and admitted that the real reason was to assist in their pursuit of the SRO. They have repeatedly, to date, refused to even discuss related problems with this issue. One such problem is that there published definition of “Practitioner” blatantly implies that other certificants have never earned their designation.

Based on the Boards thinking on the “practitioner” issue we are fortunate that they do not run the medical profession. There one earns an MD. A great many then go on into various specialties but maintain full use of their credential. CFP^® certificants, in exactly the same way, specialize in various areas of finance. Should they not be able to maintain their earned credential in the broad field of Financial Planning? This is ridiculous.

All of these misrepresentations, back room decisions and denial of facts, admittedly to satisfy ambitions to become the SRO by any means. These are but continuing examples of the Boards limited integrity, imagination and foresight as they exercise their influence on the future of the profession. Could all of this be because, for most of these years, so many Board members, over forty per cent at times, have neither the knowledge, the experience nor the other required qualifications to ever have earned a CFP^® designation?