The Financial Planning Association disagrees with its Financial Planning Coalition partners on the issue of state versus federal regulation of financial planners.
Unlike its fellow coalition members, the FPA isn't opposed to state regulation of advisors, according to FPA President Frank Pare.
The other members of the Financial Planning Coalition, the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards and the National Association of Personal Financial Planners, feel there should only be regulations on the federal level. The FPA also says it is ready to lobby on regulatory issues on both the state and federal levels.
“We agree with the CFP Board that one set of federal regulations would be the ideal,” Pare said in an interview with Financial Advisor this week. “We agree federal regulations are preferred over a patchwork of regulations across states.
“But we have members spread across the country and we have to act in their best interests. We have to follow their lead in what they want to do” and if that means supporting state regulations in a given state, that is what FPA needs to do, Pare added.
Many states are considering regulations to oversee financial planning and the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering rules on a federal level.
“State regulations are bubbling up across the country," Pare said. "We have to take the lead from our chapters in each state” because the FPA is organized legally as a member organization.
The FPA has 86 chapters and 23,000 members, most of them CFP mark holders, throughout the country.
“We just have a difference of opinion with the other coalition members. We are still part of the coalition and there is no tension with the other members,” he added. “At the end of the day we are still family—that is how I would characterize it.”