As I look back at CFP Board’s work during 2010, I’m very proud of the year that we’ve had. This year marked a milestone anniversary for CFP Board as we celebrated 25 years of granting and upholding the CFP® certification. The anniversary provided an important opportunity to share the story of all that has been accomplished to establish CFP® certification as the standard of excellence, highlighting the rigorous standards represented by the CFP® certification and the vital assistance CFP® professionals provide to Americans.

CFP Board’s Consumer Advocate, Eleanor Blayney, CFP®, helped us celebrate the 25th anniversary with the public, providing consumers with 25 tips over 25 weeks that focused on key financial strategies for five life stages, highlighting the value of seeking assistance from a CFP® professional. And this campaign – along with CFP Board’s new Consumer Guide to Financial Self-Defense, tips for re-thinking gift giving, and numerous other messages from our Consumer Advocate – received significant coverage in the mainstream and financial media. To extend the reach of our Consumer Advocate program, we also established a CFP Board Ambassador program with CFP® professionals in seven cities across the country, working to share CFP Board’s messages within their communities through local media.

In addition to our consumer outreach through the media, CFP Board worked to reach consumers directly with the opportunity to meet with a professional financial planner through Financial Planning Clinics hosted during the year, including one at the national AARP convention in Orlando. We also joined forces with the Financial Planning Association®, the Foundation for Financial Planning, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to organize the Financial Planning Days initiative, uniting the collective resources of the financial planning community and city governments nationwide to assist Americans in need of financial guidance through a series of free Financial Planning Day events held in 20 cities across the country. Each local Financial Planning Day event featured CFP® professionals and FPA members volunteering their time and expertise to provide free one-on-one counseling and classroom-style educational presentations addressing key personal finance topics. The feedback from the hundreds of attendees and volunteers around the country was overwhelmingly positive, and the generous services of the CFP® professionals who participated reflected positively on the CFP® certification.

While these efforts to reach consumers were underway, CFP Board was exploring how to maximize the effectiveness of our efforts to increase public awareness of CFP® certification. We completed a feasibility study on the merits of a national Public Awareness Campaign, conducting extensive quantitative and qualitative studies of consumers and CFP® professionals, and seeking feedback on our research and planning from CFP® professionals through more than a dozen CFP® Certificant Connection events across the country. In November, after careful review of the research and the feedback received from the CFP® professional community, the Board of Directors unanimously approved a resolution to move forward with a Public Awareness Campaign, including provisions for funding and monitoring the Campaign to ensure its effectiveness. We believe that this Campaign, expected to launch in or around April 2011, has the potential to make a real impact on public awareness of the CFP® certification – something that stands to provide value for all CFP® professionals and real benefits for the many Americans who can improve their lives with the assistance of competent, ethical and professional financial planning.

Of central importance to our efforts to raise consumer awareness of the CFP® certification is the rigor of the CFP® certification. During 2010, we took new steps to strengthen the rigor and relevance of the CFP® certification requirements with adoption of Financial Plan Development Course requirement and the release of a new exam blueprint based on the results of the 2009 Job Analysis Study, which provided current data on the tasks performed by CFP® professionals in the delivery of financial planning to clients. Our Business Model Working Group addressed how CFP Board’s Standards of Professional Conduct apply to CFP® professionals working within the variety of firm business models and the regulatory environments in which firms operate, developing guidance to help CFP professionals comply with CFP Board’s ethical standards, and releasing an updated document of Frequently Asked Questions on the Standards of Professional Conduct.

During the past year, our work with our partners in the Financial Planning Coalition – the Financial Planning Association and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors – helped lead to the inclusion of two important provisions within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010: one requiring the GAO to complete a study on the regulation of financial planners, and another authorizing the SEC to exercise its rulemaking authority after it completes a six-month study to evaluate the effectiveness of existing legal or regulatory standards of care for broker-dealers and investment advisers for providing personalized investment advice. CFP Board and our Financial Planning Coalition partners have continued our engagement on both of these issues as preparation of the studies has been underway, and we are hopeful that when the final studies are released next year, we will have made significant progress with our shared goals on behalf of the financial planning profession and American consumers.

In addition to our more public work, we finished on time and on budget a multi-year project to upgrade CFP Board’s database, and the Board of Directors overhauled the organization’s Bylaws and the Charters outlining the roles and responsibilities of our Councils and Commission. The organization is in strong shape, supported by dedicated and hard-working staff and volunteers. As I shared with the Board at our final meeting of 2010, I believe a good catchphrase for our work goes beyond “together we can” to “together we did.”

It has been an honor to serve as CFP Board’s Chair during 2010. I would like to give special thanks to Kevin Keller for the excellent work he has done with the organization, and to all of CFP Board’s staff for their tireless work and dedication to the mission of CFP Board. And I would like to thank everyone who contributed to CFP Board’s work during this productive year. CFP Board’s successes during 2010 and the past 25 years have not been accomplished alone. We’ve made it to this point with the help of the entire CFP® certificant community and the many individuals and organizations who have supported the CFP® certification. We have accomplished much together, and I am confident that CFP Board and the CFP® professional community will make the most of the opportunities before us.

Robert J. Glovsky, JD, LLM, CFP®
2010 Chair, Board of Directors
CFP Board

Contact CFP Board’s Board of Directors at
BOD@CFPBoard.org.
 

As we approach the end of a very busy and successful year, I’d like to thank Bob Glovsky for his leadership as 2010 Chair of CFP Board’s Board of Directors.

As many of you know, Bob was a dedicated advocate for the financial planning profession well before CFP Board’s creation in 1985, and he has played a pivotal role in many areas of CFP Board’s development over the years. In the early 1980’s, he helped establish the financial planning education program at Boston University as a world class educational program. That program was one of the first financial planning education programs to register with CFP Board, and it has provided many with a strong foundation on which to build rewarding careers as CFP® professionals. His initial volunteer service with CFP Board began in 1988, working with the Board of Examiners as it began to build the comprehensive CFP® Certification Examination that remains one of the key requirements for CFP® certification. And he joined our Board of Directors in 2005, serving during a time when the organization was undergoing significant changes and facing important opportunities, and being elected the Board’s Chair for 2010.

Bob has been selfless in the time and energy he has contributed to CFP Board, even with obligations to his family and business. His contributions to CFP Board’s recent accomplishments cannot be understated. All of us at CFP Board are thankful for the opportunity we have had to benefit from his experience, his energy, and his vision of the important roles for CFP Board and the CFP® certification within a recognized and regulated financial planning profession. I thank him for his dedication and commitment.

One of the major initiatives that resulted from Bob’s leadership this year was our effort to put in place a national Public Awareness Campaign to increase consumer awareness of CFP® professionals. As we shared last month, CFP Board’s Board of Directors voted unanimously to authorize plans for this Campaign. Before that vote, we conducted a feasibility study to determine if we should conduct a Campaign and, if so, what its focus should be.

This feasibility study and the planning for the Campaign are tied directly to our work to determine how we can more effectively fulfill CFP Board’s mission to benefit the public by granting the CFP® certification and upholding it as the recognized standard of excellence for personal financial planning. With the assistance of the CFP® professional community and the many individuals and organizations that have supported CFP Board’s work over the past 25 years, our work to establish the reputation and standing of the CFP® certification within the financial services industry and our efforts to reach consumer through “earned” media have met with good success. Yet we know that there is much work to be done to benefit the public by creating widespread consumer awareness of the CFP® certification and the value of working with a CFP® professional.

The Consumer - Giving Focus to the Campaign

Over the years, CFP Board has conducted many consumer studies that show there is low awareness of the CFP® certification. Our 2009 National Consumer Survey on Personal Finance, for example, found that only 28% of those surveyed were aware that the CFP® certification was a credential for financial professionals.

In research conducted as we studied the feasibility of a Public Awareness Campaign, we sought to measure the awareness and familiarity of CFP® certification among educated and affluent consumers. We studied representative samples of college-educated consumers aged 35-64, with household incomes of more than $125,000 and investible assets of more than $100,000, who were not currently working with a financial planner or advisor, a group one would assume to have higher awareness of CFP® certification than the general population. The studies did find that 46% had heard of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals. However, only 11% were very familiar, and 14% knew of CFP® certification by name only.

Those results will probably come as no surprise to many within the CFP® professional community. Quite simply, when it comes to financial planning, many consumers are not in the game.

Consumers in Their Own Words

Most consumers no idea how financial planning differs from other financial services, and the widespread negative stereotypes of “Wall Street” color their perceptions of financial planners. Consumers who recognize that they could benefit from financial planning don’t know who to trust, and when they seek out professional assistance, their process for selecting a professional is not thorough. They don’t understand the important role that certification can play in helping them identify a professional qualified to provide competent and ethical financial planning.

The data collected through our quantitative consumer research truly came to life as we conducted qualitative focus group research. When we asked people what came to mind when they heard the phrase “personal financial planner,” they said things like:

• I would expect a real slick man who would come to your home and give you a hard sell and he would then continue to push you to buy his products
• Someone churning off your account to make commissions
• Annuity sales people looking for a big upfront payment
• Guys on Wall Street sitting back saying ‘how am I going to make some money today?’

Kevin R. Keller, CAE
CEO, CFP Board

After working as a sales assistant at a wirehouse for many years, Janice F. Dabate was offered the chance to become an advisor at a bank program. She hesitated at first, not sure whether it would be the right move for her. But after talking with a co-worker, who happened to be a CFP® certificant, she decided to give the advisor role a try. “I liked her approach,” Dabate says of her colleague. “It was very different from the wirehouse. It involved finding out what clients need rather than just trying to sell them something. She was my private tutor.”

Dabate believes the decision to become an advisor changed her life. Her co-worker became not just her tutor but her mentor as well, coaching her through the challenges of the new position and the courses needed to become a CFP® professional. For the past six years, Dabate, CFP®, has been an independent financial planner with her own practice.

“Getting the CFP® designation gave me the confidence to start my own business,” Dabate says. “My mentor showed me how to develop relationships with clients, not always in words but in actions. She cared about clients, talked to them about their families, got to know them in more depth than just the things she needed to put down on a piece of paper. She showed me that you need to know people in order to help them, and she drew out of me things I wasn’t even aware I had.”

Mentors play a crucial role in the development of many planners, but there are as yet few formal opportunities to develop these sorts of professional relationships. The Financial Planning Association’s Residency Program is the most established mentoring program for financial planners, and some CFP Board-Registered Programs organize mentoring programs for students and alumni. For the most part, though, planners have to be lucky, like Janice Dabate, to find a senior colleague who can serve as sage, sounding board, and shoulder to cry on. Planners who have had or been mentors suggest that the benefits of mentoring—for the mentee, the mentor, and the profession as a whole—are too big to ignore.

Elissa Buie, CFP®, Dean of Residency with the FPA Residency Program, has experienced those benefits firsthand. “CFP® certificants are brilliant with technical knowledge, but there is no experiential component to the learning,” Buie says. “How to build a relationship with a client, how to learn what’s important to a client—these are things you can only learn while being mentored by an experienced planner. You can know every estate-planning tool there is, but if you don’t have the ability to connect with clients you’re not going to be the best planner you can be. That’s where mentoring comes in.”

The week-long FPA Residency Program enables planners to work closely with experienced CFP® practitioners, who provide insight and feedback on the ins and outs of the client/planner relationship. Attendance is limited to 35 residents and seven mentors. Residents split up into seven groups of five people, and each mentor spends time working with each of the seven groups. Residency participants are eligible for 30 hours of CFP Board continuing education credit or three months of financial planning work experience.

Much of the intensive FPA program is spent on case studies addressing the financial and life issues facing Hazel and Harvey, a fictional married couple whose situation changes over a period of years. Mentors take on the roles of Hazel and Harvey at various stages in their lives, and residents prepare and present custom-made financial plans. Residents go through the data-gathering process, review client facts, and develop solutions that meet the clients’ goals. Things get really interesting when the mentors step into Hazel and Harvey’s shoes.

Buie recalls one case study in which she played the role of Hazel. Buie’s Hazel had her head in the sand when it came to estate planning. She didn’t want to think about it because she didn’t want to think about her own death. She just wanted to live in the moment. The residents’ challenge was to convince Hazel of the benefits of estate planning without scaring her away. So when it came time to present the plan, one resident introduced the estate planning discussion by saying, “When you get to the end of your retirement…”

Buie burst out laughing at the artful way the resident avoided mentioning the word ‘death’, but also recognized that this was exactly the right approach for Hazel. “The resident had really listened to the client,” Buie says of the exercise. “Instead of saying something like ‘I know you don’t want to talk about estate planning, but…’ the resident honored Hazel’s fear without sweeping it under the rug.”

It is exactly these kinds of crucial nuances that can make or break a client relationship and, according to Buie, it is exactly this kind of learning that the mentoring process fosters. “Most residents come out of the program saying it is a life-altering experience,” she says. “They did not understand the magnitude of the human dimension in preparing and presenting a financial plan. Mentoring allows them to see the whole picture of the financial planning process.”

For Laura Tarbox, CFP®, a former dean of the FPA Residency Program, this kind of real-life learning is what mentoring is all about. The case studies are intense—Tarbox jokingly describes the FPA program as a “kind of boot camp”—but they enable planners to go through the whole process in an environment where it’s okay to fail. “People have serious meltdowns,” Tarbox explains. “They break down and cry; they have to leave the room and come back again. But the best learning comes from huge failures, and you get the most out of it if you struggle a bit. The residents use their mentors as safety nets, and they come out the other side with a lot of confidence. The change is amazing. They see it in themselves and they see it in others.”

Both Tarbox and Buie believe the profession needs more formalized mentoring opportunities. The CFP Board’s Financial Plan Development Course requirement could be a good place to start. The Financial Plan Development Course, to be put in place by all Registered Programs by January 1, 2012, requires those seeking CFP® certification to individually write and orally present a comprehensive financial plan. The goal: to help educators help students develop the poise, presence, and presentation skills that are so crucial in client meetings. (For more on education, see Educating the Next Generation of Financial Planners.)

Some CFP Board-Registered Programs are also incorporating more experiential learning in their course offerings. Golden Gate University, for example, offers a practicum in financial planning designed to help students transition from the theory phase of their careers to the actual practice of financial planning. At the heart of this process, according to Golden Gate University’s course description, is “an opportunity to work with experienced mentors as students develop a comprehensive financial plan for a real client. And while classroom time will include lectures, expert panels, and guest speakers, significant time will also be devoted to role-playing exercises and critiques intended to prepare students for their client discovery and plan presentation meetings.”

Taking on the FPA Residency Program, or engaging in any mentoring relationship, “is a scary thing to do,” Tarbox says. “It costs time and money, and you have to be willing to put yourself out there. But during tough times, communication is everything. How to communicate bad news, how to feel when a client ‘gets it’ or ‘doesn’t get it’—these are the kinds of things that mentoring enables you to see experientially. There is always such a high at the end of the program. You can see transformation in people, and you ‘get’ why we do this and what we’re all about.”

And, according to both Tarbox and Buie, the professional relationships that grow out of the mentoring experience last. Buie still regularly fields calls from her mentees, whom she helps work through sticky client situations and reframe communication challenges. And whenever she runs into former residents at conferences, they inevitably call her Hazel.

James Geary

CFP Board and our partners in the Financial Planning Coalition – the Financial Planning Association® and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors – continue to monitor developments in the two studies the Dodd-Frank legislation mandated that impact the financial planning profession. One study is focused on the regulation and oversight of financial planning, and the other on the extension of the fiduciary standard to brokers who provide investment advice. Both studies were directed to be completed within six months of the legislation, which means the studies will be released sometime in early 2011. Once the studies have been released, we expect the activity on these issues will escalate and move quickly.

In recent weeks, CFP Board and the Financial Planning Coalition have submitted several comment letters on issues related to the two studies, as well as comments on other issues affecting CFP® professionals and the American public the financial planning profession serves.

IRS Proposal for Preparer Tax Identification Number Requirement
On October 7, 2010, CFP Board sent a comment letter to the IRS with comments on proposed modifications to regulations governing practice before the IRS. In the letter, CFP Board applauded the IRS proposal to hold all tax return preparers meet strict ethical guidelines and suggested that the IRS should tailor the continuing education requirements to ensure competency of registered tax return preparers while providing flexibility in meeting those requirements. CFP Board urged the IRS to exempt CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals from the competency testing and continuing education requirements established for registered tax return preparers, given the substantial income tax-related education and examination required to attain and maintain CFP® certification.
 
SEC Proposal on Mutual Fund Distribution Fees
On November 5, 2010, CFP Board sent a comment letter to the SEC in response to the SEC’s comment period on proposed changes to mutual fund distribution fees. CFP Board expressed its support for several of the SEC’s decisions related to its mutual fund distribution fees proposal and shared its belief that the key to enhancing competition and reducing costs in the mutual fund industry is to make it easier for investors to compare the products available from different financial services providers and the cost of purchasing those products.
 
SIFMA Impact Assessment of Fiduciary Duty for Broker-Dealers
On November 30, 2010, the Financial Planning Coalition sent a comment letter to the SEC, responding to comments provided by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) that set out to assess the impact of applying the Advisers Act to all brokerage activity, and urging the SEC to adopt a strong and uniform fiduciary standard for both broker-dealers and investment advisers when making personalized recommendations to retail customers.
 
SEC Study on Enhancing Investment Adviser Examinations
On December 16, 2010, the Financial Planning Coalition sent a comment letter to the SEC providing comment on the study to enhance investment adviser examinations under Section 914 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, urging the Commission to adequately regulate investment advisers without delegating such responsibility to a self-regulatory organization such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

CFP Board has released an updated document of answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) concerning CFP Board’s Standards of Professional Conduct. Arranged by topic, these FAQs provide a way for CFP® professionals to quickly locate information that may help to assure compliance with the Standards. The revised FAQs derive from the efforts of CFP Board’s Business Model Working Group in 2010. The Working Group consists of volunteers from the compliance and financial planning departments of more than 20 financial services firms, as well as CFP Board staff.

CFP Board wants all CFP® professionals to have a thorough understanding of the Standards of Professional Conduct. Questions not answered in these FAQs may be sent to standards@CFPBoard.org for consideration and possible inclusion in future revisions of this document.

CFP Board, in partnership with Financial Planning Association, Foundation for Financial Planning and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, successfully completed 20 Financial Planning Days in cities throughout the country this fall, bringing hundreds of consumers together with CFP® professionals and FPA members. The events were promoted through numerous media outlets, municipal agencies, community organizations, employers, chambers of commerce and schools. They connected hundreds of consumers with volunteer CFP® professionals and FPA members. The feedback from attendees and volunteers has been overwhelmingly positive and many have come forward to express their gratitude and satisfaction with the program. Financial Planning Days has introduced many to the value of financial planning and benefits of working with a CFP® professional.

Save the dates and plan to join Charles A. Moran, CFP®, CEBS, JD, 2011 Chair of CFP Board’s Board of Directors, and Kevin R. Keller, CAE, CFP Board’s CEO for CFP® Certificant Connection town hall-style meetings this February. Meetings will be held in Orange County and San Diego, California on February 7, 2011, and in Scottsdale, Arizona on February 8, 2011.

These meetings are designed to provide CFP® professionals and other CFP Board stakeholders with the opportunity to engage in dialogue about the topic of regulatory reform, CFP Board’s national public awareness campaign, and other issues of importance to the CFP® certificant community. Most importantly, these events are held in an open format to allow participants to address the topics of most concern to them, giving CFP Board the chance to listen to the variety of perspectives that coexist within the financial planning profession, thereby allowing us to ensure that the decisions made by CFP Board’s leadership are informed by those perspectives.

CFP® CERTIFICANT CONNECTIONS
 
ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Monday, February 7, 2011, 8:00 - 9:30 a.m.
 
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
Monday, February 7, 2011, 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.
 
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
Tuesday, February 8, 2011, 8:00 - 9:30 a.m.

Locations, dates and registration details for these and other 2011 CFP® Certificant Connections will be announced as events are scheduled. CFP Board will notify CFP® certificants and CFP Board stakeholders in areas near the CFP® Certificant Connection events when the meeting locations are secured. For more information, please contact CFP Board at events@CFPBoard.org.

Two members of the Consumer Science Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison have come up with an innovative way to provide financial services to a hard-to-reach demographic while also nurturing the next generation of financial planners, and the CFP Board has awarded them a grant to help them do it.

Robert B. McCalla, CFP®, director of the Personal Finance Program in the Department of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and J. Michael Collins, an assistant professor and director of the University’s Center for Financial Security, have launched “financial clinics” for underserved populations taking part in other financial education activities in the community. With the help of the local Financial Education Center (FEC), and supervised by CFP® professionals, undergraduates enrolled in the University’s Personal Finance major deliver coaching and educational information to low-income individuals and families covering the basics of cash management and savings.

The University of Wisconsin, Madison initiative is based on the insight that financial coaching can be a cost- and time-effective way to enhance financial literacy and improve financial decision-making. The volunteer coaches follow a model similar to that of the financial planning process itself: goal discovery, data gathering, plan preparation, and presentation. As the clinics progress, the most successful teaching techniques are catalogued and compiled so best practices can be shared among participants as well as with the wider financial planning community. The aim: to provide clients with ongoing, systematic support in building new financial skills and changing poor financial behaviors.

The clinics thus achieve two important goals, one client-facing and the other planner-facing.

The client-facing goal is to provide cost-effective financial coaching services to underserved demographics, such as the low-income population in Dane County in south-central Wisconsin, in which the University of Wisconsin, Madison is situated. Some 19% of the county’s residents are at or below the federal poverty level. Last year, 80% of those served by the FEC had incomes below $30,000; 37% were under $10,000. Around 53% of FEC clients were women; 52% were ethnic minorities; 45% had a high school degree or less; and 12% spoke a language other than English. “The financial needs are great” among this population, says McCalla, “from basic cash management skills, financial goal setting, credit management, and understanding the availability and use of government services and programs.”

The planner-facing goal is to provide young people contemplating a career in financial planning with experience in dealing with real clients and solving real client problems. The clinics will certainly benefit the student volunteers, not least by exposing them to valuable mentoring opportunities. When confronted with an issue that goes beyond basic financial literacy, students can tap into a network of local CFP® professionals for more expert information and solutions. The CFP® professional also sits in on some of the client sessions. But the clinics will also benefit the profession as a whole, by “exposing undergraduates to the value and impact of financial planning within their community and enhancing their desire to pursue financial planning as a career,” says McCalla.

The students work from a coaching and financial education template designed by McCalla and Collins in collaboration with the FEC, which offers integrated financial education classes, individual coaching, and referrals to local community programs and services. Many of the project’s participants come from the FEC’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) advisory program. “We look for people who self-identify as having financial goals they are trying to achieve,” explains McCalla. “Some people are skeptical, because we are offering them something for free and they’ve been ripped off before.”

Getting people interested in the clinics is, in fact, the first communication challenge students face. “They have to get to know the person,” McCalla says, “establish trust and rapport,” just as in an actual client situation. Once that trust and rapport are established, though, the clinics can achieve a lot. One client was trying to get rid of credit card debt; the student volunteer helped this person go from carrying 13 credit cards to carrying just one. Another client needed help saving money; the student volunteer helped arrange for a percentage of that person’s monthly salary to be deposited directly into a savings account.

The University of Wisconsin, Madison’s financial clinics focus on delivering usable skills that clients can immediately apply to their financial lives. “It’s a self-directed curriculum,” McCalla says. “Whatever financial goal the client is trying to achieve, then that’s the curriculum. The surest sign of success is when people come back for subsequent sessions and really work on their issues. If they want to do it, we’re here.”

In your practice of personal financial planning as CFP® professionals, the CFP® marks are an invaluable asset to you. Using these marks represents to the public that you have met CFP Board’s rigorous certification requirements and that the financial planning services you offer are held to the highest standards. In upholding the value of the CFP® marks, it is imperative that they be displayed in a manner consistent with CFP Board’s trademark usage requirements. These requirements apply to the use of the CFP® marks on your business cards, Web sites, e-mail signatures and any other place on which you display them. To assist you in meeting CFP Board’s trademark usage requirements, the following outlines some of the most common mistakes in using the CFP® marks, as observed through our trademark enforcement efforts.

Common Mistake #1: Failing to use ALL CAPS type for the CFP® mark and ALL CAPS or SMALL CAPS type for the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ mark. Wherever these marks appear, please use the proper type, as it helps to reflect their distinctiveness as certification marks.

Proper Use:
CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional OR CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional
CFP® examination
 
Improper Use:
Certified Financial Planner™ professional
Cfp® mark

Prohibited:
hrogers@haroldrogerscfp.com
lisaisacertifiedfinancialplanner@gmail.com
www.happytobeacfp.org

Common Mistake #3: Not using one of CFP Board’s six approved nouns when the marks appear other than directly following a CFP® professional’s name. The six approved nouns are: mark, professional, certificant, practitioner, examination (“exam” is also acceptable) and certification. As a trademark, the CFP® marks themselves should not be used as nouns.

Proper Use:
I have been a CFP® practitioner for more than 10 years.
My practice has grown significantly since becoming a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional.
 
Improper Use:
My financial planner is a CFP®.
Becoming a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ was a smart career move.

CFP Board takes proper use of the marks very seriously and has provided resources to assist you in using the marks correctly. You may view or download CFP Board’s Guide to Use of the CFP® Certification Marks or send any questions or material you would like proofread for proper marks use to CFP Board’s Trademark Department electronically to trademark@CFPBoard.org. We will be happy to review your content and offer any necessary corrections. Please take advantage of these resources. CFP Board appreciates your commitment to upholding the value and integrity of the CFP® marks.

Glossary of Credentials for Financial Advisers
If you’re looking for general financial planning and advice, the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER[™ certification] is the gold standard.

Rose Pastore
MarketWatch.com
November 15, 2010

How to Find Retirement Savings Advice You Can Trust
Find a true professional. If you are ready to pay for professional help, your first order of business should be to locate a financial adviser who is certified. In the financial planning world, the key designation is being a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER[™ professional]. Having this designation means that the adviser has a college degree, has passed an exam, meets annual education requirements, and would face disciplinary action if they violate board regulations and ethics standards. To find certified advisers, visit cfp.net, and do a search for someone in your area.

Phil Taylor
USNews.com
October 8, 2010

Read these and other notable media references to the CFP® certification at www.CFP.net/certificants/marksinthenews.asp.

CFP Board’s media outreach efforts are greatly enhanced by the many CFP® professionals who are engaged in their own efforts to reach national and local media with the message of the benefits of financial planning and working with a CFP® professional. We appreciate all of you who help further awareness of CFP® certification across the country through your media contacts and your involvement in your communities.

CFP Board congratulates the following CFP® professionals on their professional accomplishments:

Ernest Burley, Jr., CFP®, of Bowie, Maryland, on the recent publication of his book, Money Management: From Grade School to Grad School, a guide for parents to teach their children about money.
 
Marilyn Capelli Dimitroff, CFP®, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, on being honored as 2010 Contributor of the Year as part of Financial Planning magazine’s Influencer Awards, for her tireless advocacy on behalf of financial planners.
 
Sheryl Garrett, CFP®, of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, on being honored as 2010 Practice Management Guru as part of Financial Planning magazine’s Influencer Awards, for introducing and sharing innovative practice management ideas for delivering financial planning services in a manner that's practical and affordable for the middle class.
 
Elaine King, CFP®, of Coral Gables, Florida, on the recent publication of her book, Family & Money Matters: Life Lessons for the New Generation, which was written to help teens and young adults understand how their family’s attitudes about money influence their own behavior and to teach them the basics of how to save, invest, protect and share their money.
 
Michael Kitces, CFP®, of Great Falls, Virginia, on being honored as 2010 Legacy Builder as part of Financial Planning magazine’s Influencer Awards, for his work in advancing the profession’s training of the next generation of professionals.
 
Ross Levin, CFP®, of Edina, Minnesota, on being honored with the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by Financial Planning magazine’s Influencer Awards, for repeatedly changed financial planning for the better through his exemplary work with clients, his writing for industry journals, and his roles as thought leader, dedicated volunteer and role model within the financial planning profession.
 
Myra Salzer, CFP®, of Boulder, Colorado, on being honored as 2010 Technology Wizard as part of Financial Planning magazine’s Influencer Awards, for founding Executor's Resource and Estate Logic, a highly secure suite of online services that help advisors and clients secure the many documents that are essential to maintaining and transferring intergenerational wealth.
 
Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, CFP®, of Kentfield, California, on being named to named an appointee to the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability, whose charter is to advise President Barack Obama on promoting and enhancing financial literacy and capability among the American people.

CFP Board welcomes information about the activities and accomplishments of CFP® professionals. If you have information you would like to share with CFP Board, please contact us at mail@CFPBoard.org.

Many of CFP Board's activities would not be possible without the generous contributions of CFP® professionals and other CFP Board stakeholders willing share their time and expertise. CFP Board thanks the many talented individuals who have assisted CFP Board in various capacities throughout 2010.

From the Board of Directors members who set policy and direction for CFP Board's activities, to the Disciplinary and Ethics Commission members who administer CFP Board's disciplinary review process, to the Council on Examinations members who work to sustain the integrity of the CFP® Certification Examination, to the Council on Education members who support the education components of the CFP® certification, to the Public Policy Council, to the many CFP® professionals who contributed to all of these activities and CFP Board’s consumer outreach initiatives, the leadership of CFP Board would like to extend appreciation to all who contributed to CFP Board during 2010.

CFP Board’s work benefits greatly from the generous contributions CFP® certificants and other stakeholders provide through volunteer service. Each year, we seek qualified candidates for open positions on our Councils and Commission. Ongoing opportunities also exist for short-term contributions to CFP Board’s disciplinary hearing process, the development of the CFP® Certification Examination and various committees and task forces involved with a wide range of initiatives.

If you have interest in making a direct contribution to CFP Board’s work, please take time to complete a volunteer application form. Applications will remain on file with CFP Board, and you will be notified when specific opportunities related to your qualifications and interests become available.

Learn more about current volunteer activities and download application forms at www.CFP.net/aboutus/opportunities.asp.

CFP Board
1425 K Street, NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005
P: 800-487-1497
E: mail@CFPBoard.org
W: www.CFP.net