The CFP Boards, Continued Troubling Usage of, ‘CFP® practitioner’

Article Dated: 3/2002

By Paul M. League, CFP^® & Gib Kerr, CFP^®, ChFC, CLU

www.IAQFP.org / info@IAQFP.org

The CFP Board identifies those CFP^® Certificants who would be available to help the public with financial matters by calling them “practitioners.” The remaining five thousand or more Certificants do not have a particular name, and simply represent the balance of CFP^® Certificants who use their professional training and experience in other ways. Otherwise the qualifications of the two groups are identical. When the public asks for names of CFP^® Certificants that they can approach they are provided with a CFP Board compiled list (only available via the FPA) made up of only those Certificants who accept referrals, and who the Board likes to identify as “practitioners”.

Unfortunately, the CFP Board literature that promotes practitioners misleads the public and all others by claiming that practitioners have taken an “extra step”, and they then list the various things any individual must do to become a CFP^® Certificant as that ” extra step”. This, of course, suggests that the five thousand plus other CFP^® Certificants never took this “extra step”, which is not only absolutely false but demeaning to all of those “other” equally qualified CFP^® Certificants.

The “practitioner” issue was first created a number of years ago rather quietly by the CFP Board when they applied for a Trademark of the title “CFP PRACTITIONER” as part of an ill-planned ‘CFP^® Lite’ debacle. When they apologetically withdrew the various “lite” applications (Associate CFP^®/CFP^® Associate), they quietly kept the pended “CFP PRACTITIONER” Trademark application in place. Paul M. League, CFP^®, a founding Board Member of our CONCERNED PLANNERS GROUP(sm), exposed this, resulting in the CFP Board’s eventual withdrawal of it as a pended Trademark; however, they then created the current questionable usage of the term ‘CFP^® practitioner’ and refuse to correct its confusing usage. Most importantly, they worded its promotion in the misleading manner described herein (click HERE to read the original article on this matter & the full CFP Board wording).

The CONCERNED PLANNERS GROUP(sm) has repeatedly attempted to correct this affront to our fellow CFP^® colleagues, while the CFP Board continues in refusing to make any adjustment. Indeed, they have refused to even discuss the issue further. This is one example that their apologies for their behavior during ‘CFP^®-Lite’, and their claims to better communication and openness, remain highly suspect, as well as very selectively applied. The CONCERNED PLANNERS GROUP(sm) continues working towards reaching a correction to the CFP Board’s present demeaning usage of the term ‘CFP^® practitioner’ in the interests of all CFP^® Certificants, as well as the public we serve.