During last week’s Kehrer Bielan virtual study group on developing holistic advisors, the conversation on Reg BI turned to the controversy between the CFP Board and the SEC on the standard of care. Capital Rock’s Connor Thomas noted that the CFP used to be the only game in town for advisors seeking planning credentials, but now there are lots of options for credible planning designations.
We realized that the Kehrer Bielan data base does not have up-to-date data on advisors’ designations, so Tim Kehrer polled the participants.
All the firms that responded had had least one advisor with a planning designation, and none of them have a majority of advisors with planning credentials. The polling results are consistent with the experience of BMO Harris and Middleburg Financial, two of the firms that were represented at the virtual roundtable, where about one-third of the advisors have CFPs or other designations.
But does having planning designations make a difference? Do firms with relatively more credentialed advisors do more planning? Are the plans more detailed? Do those firms have higher advisor productivity and customer penetration? And what about the impact on customer experience?
To begin to answer these questions, it would be helpful to add information on how many of your firm’s advisors have planning designations to our firm-by-firm data base. Please just reply with that number to this email. We probably already know your firm’s advisor headcount, but please provide it if you suspect that we don’t.
If you missed the conversation, you can view it here.
We continue our virtual study group on developing holistic advisors in the weeks ahead:
The State of Financial Planning in Financial Institutions
Sept 20 – 3:30-5:00 p.m. Eastern
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