The investigations and finger-pointing have begun. With markets in tumult, do we have what it takes to abandon old ways of business and elevate our industry to ensure its brightest future?

Over the last 12 months I have had the privilege to address financial planners and industry executives all over the world. I see that they strive to be true professionals and are proud of the strides our profession has made. They know that their customers and clients look to them for guidance in a complex financial landscape. However, the recent severe volatility in markets across the globe is testing our clients' faith. Distrust of all things financial is at a peak. Historically, times of crisis have been the moments of greatest innovation for improved client service in the financial planning profession. In the deep crisis we face today, an opportunity has opened to help fashion a profession that consumers will trust and admire decades from now.
But first we need a bit of history.

Where Have You Gone Merrill Lynch?
When I was a boy, I had a fantasy of earning and saving money, or perhaps getting an inheritance. I had a single idea of where I would go with the money: Merrill Lynch. My image of the firm was that of a pillar of wisdom, financial stability, professional probity, fiduciary care and accessibility to all. You could find a Merrill office in almost any town across America. A few months ago, sagging under $26 billion in losses, Merrill stumbled into the waiting arms of Bank of America, a victim of overexpansion into the subprime mortgage arena.

This failure of trust and others like it will haunt us if we don't embrace a more customer-oriented business ideal. The financial planning industry should be the standard bearer for this ideal. Indeed, we can look back at three great movements in the last 30 years that have shaped our profession for the better.

The Three Great Movements
The initial movement toward greater client orientation was the origination of comprehensive financial planning itself and the creation of the professional designation "certified financial planner." These developments grew out of the Rust Belt recession of the 1970s, which was the last great secular bear market of the 20th century, and the disillusionment investors felt then with Wall Street-an era, like our own, when the talk was about "the end of equities."

The second major wave of development in the U.S. was the movement from commissions to fees that began in earnest in the early 1980s and continues today. Again, this movement was given great initial impetus by the steep and prolonged U.S. recession of 1981-1982.

The third and final wave was the financial life planning movement that gathered force following the dot-com collapse of 2001-2002. The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 also brought many consumers and advisors to question the deeper meaning and purpose of money in our lives. Life planning represents the full embodiment of a client-centered approach to planning, since it recognizes that money is not an end in itself but a means of helping people realize their dreams for freedom and accomplishment.

Financial Planning's Historic Moment
The global market downturn of 2008 has been a time of wrenching readjustment for our industry and our clients. The foundations of our old structures are being shaken. This is the historic moment to discard the failed models of the past and create the new structure that will last for years to come-the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes. What does it look like? What are its characteristics?

To me the answer is clear. We must build on and continue to encourage these three movements, calling advisors toward a professional designation widely respected by all, completing the movement toward fees and establishing the client-service practices required by life planning.

Looking forward, there are four necessary principles that should guide us if we want to rise out of this crisis as a stronger and more respected industry:

1. Integrity
2. Relationship
3. Freedom
4. Accessibility

Integrity
In many ways, financial planners today share kinship with the medical profession of the 1800s, as described by George Eliot in Middlemarch. Back then, many physicians acted as both healer and seller of medicines. Finally fed up with being lumped in with snake oil salesmen, a small group of physicians led a hard-fought battle to divorce the medical profession from direct drug sales.

The question for us as a profession is more complex than simply separating pharmacists from physicians. A CFP at a global conference recently said to me, "We all know that if we act as a fiduciary and are transparent about fees, a client will get the same results as they would from a fee-only advisor. But when I tell a client I'm not tied to products in any way, they breathe a huge sigh of relief and light up with an enthusiastic, 'At last!'"

We must consider the appearance of integrity important too. What will it take for us in this profession to receive that huge sigh of relief and vote of confidence from the consumer, the media and our peers? How rapidly can we get there?

Questions of integrity are of course much broader than simply issues of how we are compensated. As professionals, we must boldly address all questions and lead, not follow, the march to the highest ground.

Relationship
Ask most financial planners if they have a good relationship with their clients and you are likely to get a resounding "yes." After all, we remember our clients' birthdays, hold their hands when the market is in turmoil, send them e-mails when their alma mater's sports team wins and generally provide good service. As our profession advances, however, will this be enough? After all, these relationships are ultimately about creating plans that deliver the lives our clients long to live.

As so much of financial planning becomes commoditized, the one element that cannot be replaced by a computer program or checklist is a deep, personal relationship. This relationship requires three important skill sets-effective listening, empathy and the ability to inspire. These skills need to be employed in each phase of the client interview process. Most CFP courses offer only an hour or two of training in these critical skills. Yet they are trainable. Those advisors who can create such relationships will be able to differentiate themselves.

Freedom
As most developed countries emerged from the economic and social upheavals of the 1930s and the Second World War, financial freedom was usually envisioned in material terms: a home in a safe neighborhood, an automobile or two, an array of consumer products such as TVs and appliances, a pleasant annual vacation. Essentially, the notion that freedom is tied to material things became ingrained in us. Sixty years later, this sensibility still pervades our financial planning textbooks. Perhaps understandably so, given the deprivation of the war years.

But if we take a life planning approach to our clients, they discover that freedom is often much simpler, much deeper, much purer and, in many ways, much more easily accomplished than what they first imagine. Life planners find that the most enduring client goals almost always center on meaningful relationships with family and friends, creativity, service to others, spiritual pursuits and harmony with one's environment, not simply bigger cars or more lavish vacations.

By applying life planning techniques, one is better able to set the right objectives for clients from the start. After that, the technical planning work can begin on education, retirement, home purchases and the like, and these things are then rooted in the proper context and our expertise has an enormous impact, not only for our clients but for our own career satisfaction. When we assist clients in finding their true goals, give them permission to pursue them, support their endeavors and use traditional financial planning skills to deliver on their dreams, we produce extraordinary freedom for the client and forge a nigh unbreakable bond of trust.

Accessibility for All
Is freedom just for those with seven-figure account balances? As many of the industry's top practice management consultants tell us, we should raise our investable asset minimums to $1 million in assets or more. That seems to be the message the financial planning profession is sending to the general public. Freedom is only for those who can pay our fees!

If we focus our efforts just on the well-off, though, I'm afraid we fail the integrity test and do ourselves and the broader community a great disservice. The freedoms we're discussing are so powerful and so life-changing that everyone should be able to achieve them. Our ability to help clients achieve that freedom is not always so complex. It doesn't require much time or expenditure of resources. Still, we in the planning community have no real mechanism for doing it broadly.

Organizations such as the Garrett Planning Network and the Cambridge Alliance do help offer quality financial planning services to middle-income clients, and many practitioners provide some pro bono work. But it's hardly enough. In the U.S., the FPA and NAPFA have been wrestling with this problem. How will we leverage our substantial skills to lift as many people as possible from financial bondage to financial freedom?

Currently, the way forward isn't clear and many paths include regulatory hurdles, compensation challenges, time and funding obstacles and gaps in responsibility. It is a discussion we must earnestly address as we create the standards for our profession.

Conclusion
We work in a field that has the power to transform lives and deliver true freedom to people from all walks of life. We deserve the highest reputation among our communities. I am convinced that if we use the four principles I've outlined as our guides, we can build a stronger professional stature, one that can take market upheavals in stride and deliver an outstanding customer experience. We should ask nothing less from ourselves or our colleagues.

George Kinder is the founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning and author of three books, most notably The 7 Stages of Money Maturity and Lighting the Torch. He leads trainings globally on relationship skills, the client delivery process and financial life planning. Learn more at www.kinderinstitute.com.