Certified Financial Planner (CFP) Review
Our take: If you decide to work with a Certified Financial Planner, or CFP, you’ll be sitting across from someone who has spent at least a year studying a wide array of personal finance topics, passed a rigorous exam (about 60% of test-takers pass the exam), has at least two years of experience in the financial services industry, and has sworn to act as a fiduciary with clients. On top of all that, this designation, offered by the nonprofit CFP Board, is independently accredited. That means a third-party organization has run this certification through its paces and signed off on it — that’s a rarity among financial advisor certifications. The CFP designation is up there with the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Certified Public Accountant (CPA) as being among the top financial advisor certifications.
Certified Financial Planner (CFP)
Offered by: The CFP Board
Website: https://www.cfp.net/
Overall summary
Here’s a summary of how the CFP designation stacks up on our criteria.
Feature | Certified Financial Planner (CFP) |
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Overall | |
Nonprofit | |
Independent accreditation | |
Exam required | |
Number of questions | |
Continuing Education requirement | |
Background check | |
Ethics requirement | |
Fiduciary requirement | |
Consumer complaint forum | |
Check credential status |
Compare financial advisor certifications
Check out how advisor certifications stack up against each other.
Feature | Accredited Financial Analyst (AFA) | Accredited Wealth Management Advisor (AWMA) | Certified Financial Planner (CFP) | Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) | Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) | Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP) |
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Overall | ||||||
Nonprofit | ||||||
Independent accreditation | ||||||
Exam required | ||||||
Number of questions | ||||||
Continuing Education requirement | ||||||
Background check | ||||||
Ethics requirement | ||||||
Fiduciary requirement | ||||||
Consumer complaint forum | ||||||
Check credential status |
Methodology
To generate star ratings for financial advisor certifications, investor.com ranks the certification on each of 10 criteria. Below are the questions we sought to answer for each certification. We then applied a weighted score for each response, leading to an overall star rating for each certification.
- Is the organization that offers the certification nonprofit or for-profit?
- Is the certification accredited by an independent, third-party organization?
- Is an exam required to earn the certification?
- How many questions are on the exam?
- Is a background check required of certificants?
- Is continuing education required to maintain the certification?
- Is there any type of ethics requirement, e.g. certificants must sign a code of ethics?
- Is the certificant required to agree to an explicit fiduciary duty in interactions with clients?
- Can consumers easily submit a complaint against a certificant?
- Can consumers easily check advisors’ certification status online?
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