LETTERS

Another serving of alphabet soup

Re: Certified financial planner designation. I realize we’ve beaten this CFP thing to death, but the fact remains it requires more study and more testing to become a CLU than a CFP, so why all the hype?

In fact, if you have your chartered life underwriter designation you only have to take two additional CFP courses (out of six) to receive your CFP designation.

Where is the hype of all the well-trained CLUs of the world? In my opinion, the CFP groups are experts at hype. There must be a CFP marketing corps somewhere within their organization.

DON AIRINGTON

President

Airington Assurance

Leawood, Kan.

P.S.: I am neither CLU, CFP, ChFC, CPA or XYZ. Yes, the CFP people make me feel ashamed and humbled. I did audit all the CLU studies, just to find what I did and did not know about the business I have been in since 1965; I learned a lot.

… CFPeeved

Bob Goss’ defense of the CFP designation (Letters, May 18) is understandable given his role as president of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. It is his job to defend the mark.

However, there is an important element of the CFP apparatus which he conveniently does not address, nor has it been addressed in the recent debates in the pages of InvestmentNews and elsewhere: The CFP is now substantially controlled by a for-profit business, the “University of Phoenix.” The sell-off of the CFP curriculum, including the administration of examinations, was in fact a sell-out of the CFP’s integrity.

The University of Phoenix has an economic incentive to prevent as many candidates as possible from advancing through the curriculum. The marketing efforts of the Board of Standards, the Institute for Certified Financial Planners and the University of Phoenix to get more people to enroll in the program result in thousands of aspiring CFPs paying substantial fees for tuition, books and study materials. By failing a large number of those candidates, and thus requiring their re-enrollment, the university virtually guarantees its income stream and profits.

This tidy little monopoly fits well with the guild mentality of the ICFP and Board of Standards. If the CFP in fact becomes a license to practice financial planning and they control the number of designations awarded, they win control of who and how many practice. The public, as it usually does when dealing with financial institutions, loses.

Licenses are a tool of public policy. As such, they should be awarded on behalf of the public, as legitimate ones are, by a public agency — non-profit, government or government-sanctioned. And courses of study for licenses should be available from a wide variety of providers.

As a practicing financial planner who upholds the codes of ethics of both the ICFP and the International Association for Financial Planning (and who also is working toward the CFP designation), I believe the CFP mark’s own integrity should be called into serious question.

LOUIS F. GORR

Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp.

Richmond, Va.