Beginning October 1, Certified Financial Planner professionals will pay $100 more for the annual certification fee, the CFP Board announced in a memorandum to its members on Tuesday.
The increase is the first since 2017, when the board hiked fees by $30. The new annual CFP certification fee will cost $455 and will affect new and renewing members. The board has nearly 92,000 members.
In the notice to members, the board cited its framework for a five-year strategic plan to guide the organization’s operations and advance its mission, including its goals of increasing awareness of planning, diversifying the workforce, promoting planning as a career choice among young people and giving clients greater access to financial services.
“After careful review of the work needed to accomplish CFP Board’s important mission and our new strategic priorities, we explored the investment required to achieve these. The board of directors committed significant funding from CFP Board’s reserves. For additional investment funds, we made changes to the fee structure associated with the value that the CFP certification brand delivers to CFP professionals and to CFP Board’s partners in its certification program,” the board said in the notice from Kamila Elliott, the board of directors’ chair, and Kevin Keller, the CFP Board’s CEO.
In a detailed list, the board cited the programs that will benefit from the fee increase. The programs, it said, “ensure the long-term relevance and sustainability of the financial planning profession and the value and importance that your CFP certification communicates to your clients and prospects.”
The board said the fee increase will be invested as follows. Of the $100:
• $15 will go to a public awareness campaign to increase consumer awareness of, and preference for, working with CFP professionals (it also takes into account the higher costs of media);
• $35 will go to workforce development. This means supporting a national initiative to promote financial planning as an attractive career choice among college-bound high school students, as well as a baccalaureate program expansion;
• $10 will go to the Center for Financial Planning to support initiatives that advance diversity and inclusion in the financial planning profession, to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population, and to support development of new research and resources to support the practice of financial planners;
• $20 will go to client impact research/practice resources to support the development of empirical, longitudinal research studies that assess the impact financial planning has on clients’ well-being. It will also go to other new research and resources for practitioners and help expand clients’ access to pro bono services;