TheLiveBigWay* – Graduations and Other Rites of Passage
With graduation season looming and so many high school and college grads preparing for one of life’s larger rites of passage, the Yeske Buie Team is celebrating a major milestone by one of its own. On April 10th of this year, Yusuf Abugideiri became the latest member of our financial planning team to become “certified”, gaining the right to call himself a Certified Financial Planner®. This is a signature achievement that requires years of specialized education, grueling tests, and extensive professional experience, and we’re very proud of Yusuf’s accomplishment. Gaining certification is a fundamental expectation for everyone on our financial planning team and any team member not yet certified is currently on track to do so.
And if you’re curious about what it means to become a Certified Financial Planner® licensee, please read on…
The Certified Financial Planner® mark was originally offered by the College for Financial Planning, which was established in 1972, three years after the profession of financial planning came into existence. The college graduated its first class of Certified Financial Planners® in 1973. In 1985, the ownership and responsibility for granting the CFP® marks transferred to the newly-created International Board of Standards and Practices for Certified Financial Planners (IBCFP), which is now known as the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board).
To obtain certification, a planner must have satisfied the “Four Es” – Education, Examination, Experience, and Ethics. Candidates must hold a bachelor’s degree upon certification and must have completed a CFP Board-approved education program covering 78 financial planning topics. After the education requirement is complete, candidates may apply to sit for the CFP® exam, which is a 10-hour examination administered over two days. Candidates must then accumulate three years of full-time relevant experience (two years if under the direct supervision of a CFP®) and complete the ethics certification, which includes an inquiry into the candidate’s background and contains an agreement to adhere to the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics, before being eligible to use the CFP® marks. To maintain certification, CFPs® are required to complete at least 30 hours of “Continuing Education” credits every two years.
CFP® licensees are held to a fiduciary standard, which means they must act in utmost good faith, in a manner he or she reasonably believes to be in the best interest of the client. By contrast, many other financial professionals are held to a suitability standard, which means they will give recommendations that are “suitable” to the client’s circumstances, but are not required to put the client’s best interests first, nor are they obligated to disclose conflicts of interest.
Over its now 40-year history, the Certified Financial Planner® marks have emerged as the dominant professional standard in the United States and, through the Financial Planning Board of Standards, in 22 other countries as well.
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