In Practice January 12, 2024

CFP Board Approaches 100,000 Certified Professionals

The number of CFP professionals reached an all-time high of 98,875, with 2023 marking the most diverse class to date.

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The CFP Board reported a record number of new Certified Financial Planner certificate recipients in 2023, according to its annual count issued Thursday.

As of December 31, 2023, the number of CFP professionals reached an all-time high of 98,875, an increase of 3.9% from 2022 numbers.

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When it came to the calendar year, the class of 2023 welcomed 6,089 new CFP professionals. Of these new certificate receivers, 56% were younger than 35, and 1,692 were women, who made up 27.8% of the class. The CFP reported 853 racially and ethnically diverse professionals, 14.0% of the new class.

While the percentages of female and diverse professionals remain low, the 2023 class still had the most women and most racially and ethnically diverse CFP professionals in a single year. The professional certification body saw the addition of 173 more women CFP professionals than the year before, representing an 11.5% increase. There were also 90 more racially and ethnically diverse candidates who became CFP professionals this year, a 12.6% increase.

The number of CFP professionals increased across various racial and ethnic groups, including:

  • The number of Hispanic CFP professionals grew by 11.3% to 3,016 people, 3.1% of all professionals;
  • The number of Black CFP professionals grew by 7.5% to 1,899 people, 1.9% of all professionals;
  • The number of Asian or Pacific Islander CFP professionals increased by 5.5% to 4,096 people, 4.1% of all professionals;
  • American Indian or Alaskan Native CFP professionals increased their numbers by 6.6% to 241 people, 0.2% of all professionals; and
  • Multi-ethnic CFP professionals grew by 20% to 156 people, 0.2% of all professionals.

“As we enter the 51st year of CFP certification, the value of the CFP mark is only growing,” Kevin Keller, the CFP Board’s CEO, said in a statement. “CFP Board is dedicated to building a sustainable, diverse financial planning profession that reflects the communities we serve—it’s one of our strategic priorities. We aim to attract talent and insights from all backgrounds to meet the growing demand for competent and ethical financial planners.”

The CFP Board was one of PLANADVISER’s Vision Award winners in 2023 in part for its decision to restructure the organization to have one division focused on certification and training and another working toward “competent and ethical financial planning and expand[ing] CFP professional diversity for the benefit of the public.”

Compliance January 12, 2024

ASA Calls on Congress to Name DOL Employees Involved With Fiduciary Proposal

The American Securities Association asked Congress in a letter to identify DOL staff involved in the fiduciary proposal and to consider recusing them from its finalization, a request that drew condemnation from a former DOL Assistant Secretary.

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The American Securities Association wrote a letter on Wednesday to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets calling on the subcommittee to identify Department of Labor staff involved with the creation of fiduciary proposal, sometimes called the retirement security proposal. This request drew condemnation from Phyllis Borzi, a former assistant secretary of Labor.

The letter asks that the subcommittee “request that the DOL identify, with specificity, the career employees who have been involved, directly or indirectly, in this policy initiative over the last decade. Evaluate whether these individuals are acting in the best interest of the American people and what outside influences may be informing their actions. Evaluate whether these people should be recused from working on this issue, including finalizing the current rule and any releated [sic] lawsuits.”

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The retirement security proposal would extend fiduciary duty under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act to certain one-time transactions, such as rollovers and annuity sales. The DOL has been trying to regulate on this issue for many years, as the letter says, and one final rule, similar to the current proposal, was vacated by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018.

The ASA’s letter argues that the DOL has wasted considerable public resources in pursuing this rulemaking despite previous setbacks and that “American taxpayer dollars continue to be spent on policy initiatives that the courts have repeatedly deemed illegal.”

Borzi, a former assistant secretary of labor from 2009 to 2017, said of this letter that, “to my knowledge, no one has ever before made such a shocking or dangerous recommendation to publicly target career employees (and “out” them by name so that they become targets for abuse) for simply doing their jobs.  Obviously this is yet another not so subtle attempt to shut down a policy process that would help protect investors by mitigating losses they experience from conflicted investment advice just because these financial institutions prefer the status quo.”

Borzi added that, “if this advice to Congress is an indication of the type of mean-spirited thought process that goes into the recommendations that the members of this organization provide to their clients, we need far more than the DOL proposed regulation to protect investors from harmful advice.”

Michael Kreps, a principal in the Groom Law Group who previously served as a senior counsel for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, says he had never seen a letter to Congress with this sort of request in it before. “I don’t recall seeing that kind of argument before, but I also can’t think of a rulemaking in the retirement space that is so controversial and has so much history.”

The DOL declined to comment, and the ASA had no further comment beyond the letter.

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