A proposal for a separate non-practitioner Certified Financial Planner (CFP) mark has been de-feated by strong opposition from elements within the US financial planning industry.
A proposal for a separate non-practitioner Certified Financial Planner (CFP) mark has been de-feated by strong opposition from elements within the US financial planning industry.
Vocal opposition by high profile planning figures in the US defeated the proposal by the CFP Board of Governors to introduce a CFP Practitioner with a capital “P” to indicate a planner was currently in practice. Lower case “p” CFP practitioners would then be those who held the mark but were not working as advisers.
Opponents of the new mark believe the name could have potentially divided the quality of CFPs in the minds of consumers even though the mark would not require any fundamental difference in qualifications.
“The CFP Practitioner is not an area of specialisation, it is at best a duplication of what CFP is. They claim it will identify the CFP who is ‘in practice,’ but that person is already so identified in that they deal with customers or they don’t,” says League Financial & Insurance Services princi-pal Paul League.
CFP Board of Governors chair Patricia Houlihan says the distinction with the “CFP Practitioner” mark was only one of semantics and the difference was for the benefit of consumers. Non-practitioners would be left alone to pursue their chosen fields without any further distinction.
The mark would require the same educational, ethical and practice standards and would not be policed by the Board.
The Board was required to meet a June filing deadline proving that it had used the mark in print and promotional materials and Houlihan says the use of the mark in advertisements was a way to hold onto it should the Board proceed with the June filing.
Critics say they were surprised to see “CFP Practitioner” appear as a trademark name which be-gan the questioning of the Board’s motivations.
Rejection of the new mark follows rejection of the Associate CFP mark in December last year. This mark was intended to be applied to planners coming from non-planning backgrounds but was widely felt by opponents as diminishing the strength of the CFP designation.
