NYC TO CFP: DROP DEAD; CASE WORKERS ARE FINANCIAL PLANNERS TOO – BOARD CAVES IN TO CITY, MULLS HELPING TRAIN BUREAUCRATS

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

That’s apparently the new strategy of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards in its continuing battle with New York over a decision by the city’s welfare department to call some case workers “financial planners.”

Last year CFP Board president Robert Goss sent a letter to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani outlining strenuous objections to the new moniker. Many certified CFPs didn’t take kindly to sharing a title with the bureaucrats who screen applicants at New York City’s 31 welfare centers — now called “job centers” under the tougher get-a-job regime.

Says Rosilyn Overton, president of the New York chapter of the International Association for Financial Planning: “Financial planning is a specific discipline that has very little to do with the kind of basic budgeting these people do. It may be the bread and butter of life, but it ain’t financial planning.”

After months of pressing their case long distance, officials of the Denver-based CFP Board last month finally sat down with representatives of what the city, completing the semantic overhaul, now calls the Family Independence Administration.

Bottom line on the city dropping its “financial planner” job description: fuggedabowdit.

“As we told the CFP Board, our staff is engaged in counseling our participants about their financial options and eligibility — the name is appropriate,” says Debra Sproles, spokeswoman for the Human Resources Administration, which oversees the Family Independence Administration.

pro bono planning pondered

Despite that rebuff, the CFP Board still wants to work with the city. Among the options — all pro bono — being explored: Having licensed CFPs conduct training seminars for the welfare workers, putting together a CFP Board-authorized handbook of financial planning for use by the city and possibly even having CFPs work directly with welfare recipients or newly employed past recipients.

Both sides stress that talks are very preliminary and that nothing has been decided.

“The meeting was positive,” says CFP Board spokesman Noel Maye, who calls discussion of specific proposals “premature.”

Still, Ms. Overton figures, “This way, at least if they’re going to call them financial planners, they’ll have some training.”

Not that she’s completely satisfied: “The truth is we still don’t like the name. It’s like calling a janitor a sanitary engineer. It doesn’t make the job any different.”