P. Kemp Fain, JR., CFP®

At a time when financial planning was still finding its footing, P. Kemp Fain, Jr. helped give the profession a vision of what it could become — then devoted himself to making that vision real.

Fain was the first person to enroll in the CFP® certification program and a member of its inaugural graduating class in 1973. From the beginning, he saw financial planning as something larger than a collection of financial products or services. He believed it could become a distinct profession, grounded in education, competency, ethics and responsibility to the public.

He helped build the institutions that could make that vision real. Fain founded the first local chapter of the International Association for Financial Planning in Knoxville, Tennessee. He went on to co-found and lead the Institute of Certified Financial Planners and later helped found and subsequently chaired the International Board of Standards and Practices for Certified Financial Planners, a predecessor of CFP Board.

His most enduring expression of that vision came in “One Profession, One Designation,” a 1987 white paper that he carried to the national stage in a landmark 1988 speech. Fain called for a unified profession organized around rigorous standards for education, examination, experience, continuing education and ethics and for an independent standards-setting body operating in the public interest. He also challenged financial planners to see themselves not primarily as sellers of products, but as professionals providing client-centered advice.

Many of the ideas Fain championed became part of the foundation on which modern financial planning was built.

Fain died in 1994. But the profession he imagined continued to take shape.

His legacy lives in its standards, its institutions and its enduring belief that financial planning is not simply work to be done, but a profession with obligations to the people it serves.