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Report Your Experience
Get ahead of the game. You can report your experience at any time through the online experience reporting profile available in your CFP Board Account Dashboard. You will be able to review previously submitted entries, update hours for your current position and enter new experience.
How to Report Your Experience
Your experience can be reported to CFP Board at any time through the experience reporting feature in your CFP Board Account Dashboard. We encourage you to report early and update often to keep your profile current. If you have already reported experience, you can also use your Account Dashboard to review past entries and confirm or update your remaining hours balance.
There are 2 main pathways to completing the experience requirement. Review them today.
What Qualifies as Experience
“Primarily engaging” means your work duties predominately involve creating/conducting a personal financial plan with your own individual client(s).
“Direct Support” roles involve assisting in the creation of a personal financial plan and offering personal financial advice with the engaging financial planner without interacting with the client individually.
“Indirect Support” is displaying specific knowledge and competency that supports the financial planner and/or the personal financial planning process, or work experience assisting financial planners with the personal financial planning process without creating/conducting a plan.
Student/trainee in your profession where you do not have your own financial planning clients but instead assist a professional with their clients. Financial planning-related internships are eligible for credit toward the 6,000 Hour Standard Pathway. Experience is calculated at an hour-to-hour match.
CFP Board approved Residency and Externship programs are eligible for credit toward the 6,000 Hour Standard Pathway. Experience hours accredited are determined by the program courses completed.
All levels of supervision are acceptable if the chain of supervision eventually leads back to the financial planner/professional.
CFP Board defines Teaching as serving in the capacity as a full-time or adjunct faculty member responsible for the planning and delivery of financial planning related topics, at an accredited college or university, where instruction is equal to a minimum of 30 hours per quarter/semester.
To qualify for experience credit, a teacher must meet the following criteria:
- Teach full-time as defined by the institution or a minimum of 30 instructional hours per quarter/semester.
- Be the primary instructor of the course
- Be responsible for creating course syllabus, content and assessments for the course
- Confirm the focus of the course is consistent with CFP Board’s Principal Knowledge Topics
If the institution employing the teacher is not a CFP Board registered program, teaching experience is capped at 4,000 hours.
“Primarily engaging” means your work duties predominately involve creating/conducting a personal financial plan with your own individual client(s).
“Direct Support” roles involve assisting in the creation of a personal financial plan and offering personal financial advice with the engaging financial planner without interacting with the client individually.
“Indirect Support” is displaying specific knowledge and competency that supports the financial planner and/or the personal financial planning process, or work experience assisting financial planners with the personal financial planning process without creating/conducting a plan.
Student/trainee in your profession where you do not have your own financial planning clients but instead assist a professional with their clients. Financial planning-related internships are eligible for credit toward the 6,000 Hour Standard Pathway. Experience is calculated at an hour-to-hour match.
CFP Board approved Residency and Externship programs are eligible for credit toward the 6,000 Hour Standard Pathway. Experience hours accredited are determined by the program courses completed.
All levels of supervision are acceptable if the chain of supervision eventually leads back to the financial planner/professional.
CFP Board defines Teaching as serving in the capacity as a full-time or adjunct faculty member responsible for the planning and delivery of financial planning related topics, at an accredited college or university, where instruction is equal to a minimum of 30 hours per quarter/semester.
To qualify for experience credit, a teacher must meet the following criteria:
- Teach full-time as defined by the institution or a minimum of 30 instructional hours per quarter/semester.
- Be the primary instructor of the course
- Be responsible for creating course syllabus, content and assessments for the course
- Confirm the focus of the course is consistent with CFP Board’s Principal Knowledge Topics
If the institution employing the teacher is not a CFP Board registered program, teaching experience is capped at 4,000 hours.
Completing Your Experience Profile
We will accept experience completed within 10 years before and 5 years after successful completion of the CFP® exam. Once your experience requirement is completed, your account will show a “Provisionally Accepted” status until final CFP® exam results are released verifying you successfully passed the exam. At that time, the “Provisionally Accepted” status will change to “Accepted.” Some helpful tips are below.
Refresh Hours
Current experience (with no end date) entered in your Experience Profile can be refreshed at any time. The Refresh Hours function recalculates hours from the date entered to the current date.
Experience Entered
You will enter experience or refresh hours for your position until you meet the required number of hours. You should assume that the experience you entered is provisionally accepted, unless otherwise noted. Some experience types will be automatically reviewed and/or verification requested.
Experience Submitted
Once you meet the required number of hours, you will need to submit your entered experience by clicking the “Submit” button that will appear. Once submitted, each experience entry will have an updated status of Accepted, Pending Verification, or Provisionally Accepted.
Experience Statuses Terminology
Below is some helpful terminology related to the status of experience that has been entered and submitted.
Under Internal Review
Certain experience entries will trigger an automatic internal review. Once the review is complete, the candidate will be notified whether the experience has been Provisionally Accepted, if more information is required or if experience has been denied.
Pending Verification
A status of "Pending Verification" indicates that CFP Board has sent a verification request to the Supervisor or Qualified Attester identified with that job experience, asking them to complete an attestation. This attestation includes verification of the position, start date, end date (if applicable), hours worked per week, and selected relevant primary elements if applicable to the job type.
Provisionally Accepted
Applies only to Experience submitted BEFORE successful completion of the CFP® exam.
After an entry has been reviewed and approved by CFP Board and verified by your supervisor/attester (if applicable), the experience entry will be placed in a “Provisionally Accepted” status. These hours have been confirmed as qualifying towards the CFP® Experience requirement and are only pending the completion of the CFP® Exam.
Accepted
Once the CFP® exam has been successfully completed and the official exam results have been released, experience entries approved by CFP Board will have a status of “Accepted”. Additionally, previously submitted experience will automatically change from Provisionally Accepted to Accepted, allowing the candidate to proceed to the next steps in the certification process.
Are You Ready To Report Your Experience?
We encourage you to report your experience and monitor your status. Log in to your CFP Board Account Dashboard and use the experience reporting feature.
Start Your Journey to CFP® Certification
- Track your progress with the CFP® Certification Tracker
- Post your resume at the Career Center
- Connect with a mentor who can guide you
- Register and prepare for the exam
- Find career and financial support
- Connect with other candidates at our online forum