In an attempt to further burnish its flagship credential amid booming membership, the Investment Management Consultants Association, or IMCA, says its Certified Investment Management Analyst, or CIMA, designation and its certification program have been accredited by the American National Standards Institute. ANSI is the U.S. representative to the International Organization for Standardization, the body that oversees international measurement standards for items as diverse as pipes, paper, medical devices and acoustics.
"We're the first financial services organization in the U.S. to receive that accreditation," says Sean Walters, IMCA's executive director and CEO.
The move comes as the field of professional designations is getting crowded and state regulators and Congress have tried to stop the proliferation of misleading licenses used mainly to sell products, especially to seniors. In 2008, the North American Securities Administrators Association came out with a model rule for state securities regulators to prohibit the use of such wobbly designations. Among their criteria was that designations be given third-party accreditation by ANSI and other groups.
The accreditation by ANSI was a four-year process that IMCA undertook even before the financial crisis made ripples and various regulatory bodies began discussing how to oversee the disparate group of professionals calling themselves financial planners.
John Granzow, IMCA's president of the board, says the association wanted to give the CIMA designation extra credibility as the alphabet soup of professional designations proliferates. To achieve the CIMA certification, candidates must complete a program offered by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and pass a certification exam. Those who hold the CIMA designation must complete and report 40 hours of continuing education every two years.
"Organizations in the business of certifying people should meet standards themselves, and financial services have started to go down that path," says Walters.
Walters says that as regulators seek to hold financial advisors to higher fiduciary standards, consumers are going to research the credentials behind somebody's name, and will be more diligent in finding out what's behind an official-sounding acronym. Concerns like these, coupled with regulators' increasing pressure to use a fiduciary standard has led to a new designation: the Registered Fiduciary, or RF, created by Dalbar Inc.
The CIMA designation is not the only accredited mark. The CFP mark, handed out by the CFP Board of Standards is accredited by the National Commission of Certifying Agencies, which also accredits programs in a wide variety of industries, many of them health care related. A CFP Board spokesman says the CFP mark is more focused on personal financial planning, whereas IMCA focuses more on investment management.
Walters says IMCA now has 8,000 members, representing a 40% increase in the past three years. Walters and Granzow credit the stability of its membership and a new "certified private wealth advisor" designation. But as reported in Financial Advisor, IMCA's ability to placate both its wirehouse broker members and its growing RIA base by not taking tough advocacy positions on the fiduciary standard have helped the organization-at the expense of the Financial Planning Association, in particular.
"There's going to be a lot of activity among regulators to fight over who oversees advisors," Walters says. "And I think once that dust settles, the movement towards a greater crackdown on the credential advisors put after their name is going to escalate. So it's CIMA's position to be at the forefront of that trend."