Certainly, the ICFP never would have agreed to merge into the FPA if the new association didn't embrace the CFP mark. With a 29,000-member organization now committed to the CFP license, it would appear that rival designations, including the American College's ChFC and the American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants' (AICPA) PFS marks, are on the wane. (The AICPA recently decided it would fold its personal financial planning division.) "If you look at the development of any profession, you'll see that they eventually agreed on a common standard," says Norm Boone of Boone Financial Advisors in San Francisco.
The FPA's commitment to advancing the CFP mark has enabled it to forge an unusually close relationship with the CFP Board of Standards. CFP Board Chair Rick Adkins says the FPA's embrace of the CFP mark earned it "most favored nation status." Indeed, one source of disagreements between many CFP Board directors and its recently departed CEO, Lou Garday, was that Garday wanted to offer the same status to both the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors and the Society For Financial Services Professionals, and the other directors at the CFP Board rightly felt the other associations hadn't made the same commitment to the CFP designation that the FPA had. The relationship between the FPA and the CFP Board has become so close, in fact, that some think Garday's successor could come from the FPA.
In the interests of professional unity some, like Boone, wish the CFP Board would simply grandfather ChFC and PFS designation holders. But the CFP Board rejected such a move last year, reasoning that while it would have made the FPA's life easier it also would have undermined the integrity of the CFP mark.
So the FPA likely will continue to walk a fine line, trying to upgrade the level of professionalism without alienating too many members. "Anybody who wants to be part of it is welcome, but to have a profession you have to have a meaningful standard," Moisand says.
The FPA must try to support higher standards while sidestepping controversies ignited by the third rail of financial planning-the compensation issue. Like class in Europe and race in America, compensation controversies among financial planners seem almost inescapable. The more people try to avoid it, the less they are able to do so. Over time, discord over compensation may lose its resonance as many planners shift towards fees. Today, nearly 1,000 of the 4,900 reps at LPL accept new clients exclusively on a fee-only basis.
Challenges remain. Moisand notes that the FPA has been slow to convince veteran planners of the value of its recently created residency and intern programs. But he believes that when they come to understand the value of those programs, many will embrace them. Were that to happen, it could mark the genesis of real career paths for future planners, a component of many professions that has yet to surface in financial planning.
For a new association to succeed, it will need a more viable raison d'etre than simply exploiting disgruntlement within various quarters of the FPA. But for the FPA to achieve its potential, it will have to get members to buy into programs that capitalize on the growth the profession is likely to experience.