Financial planning representatives from China, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States joined forces to assess and develop global financial planner certification at a recent Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB) two-day meeting.

The aim of the meeting is to develop guidance documents to assist certifying bodies in evaluating the work experience of candidates for financial planner certification worldwide.

The six member countries were tasked with developing a framework to evaluate a candidate’s portfolio of work experience for financial planner certification as well as discuss methodologies to support a supervised work experience component for those seeking to be recognised as financial planning professionals.

The FPSB hopes to have established guidance documents and templates for practitioners, employers, educators and certification bodies by 2010. It plans to work on the draft version of its Financial Planner Supervision and Portfolio Framework and Model Supervision Program Processes and Procedures for Financial Planners through a series of conference calls and in-person meetings during the first half of 2010. The draft document will be distributed for comment to other FPSB member organisations in 23 territories around the world as well as other FPSB stakeholders during a 60-day exposure period in July or August. Approval for the final documents is expected at its global meeting in Seoul in October.