NAPFA to allow advisers to design continuing ed plan

The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors is giving its members more flexibility in how they keep themselves current in the advisory profession. The organization announced last week that advisers who have been NAPFA members for five years or more would no longer be required to accumulate continuing-education hours in certain core areas. Instead, longtime NAPFA members can formulate their own course outline to amass the 60 hours of continuing education they need every two years. Two of those hours still must be acquired through ethics training. Previously, NAPFA members had to complete a minimum of five credit hours in each of six areas — insurance and risk management, investments, income tax planning, retirement planning, employee benefits and estate planning — along with ethics. Advisers who have been in NAPFA fewer than five years still will have to complete the 30 hours of CE in the core areas. NAPFA chief executive Geoffrey Brown said that the change reflects the fact that advisers pursue particular interests and niches as they gain more experience in the profession. “With that recognition, we want to give them the responsibility and freedom to develop their own individual CE plans,” he said. Dave O’Brien, president of O’Brien Financial Planning Inc., likes the latitude the new rule will give him. “This make continuing education personally relevant,” Mr. O’Brien said. “If you want to focus on a certain area of your development, this allows you to explore that.” For instance, the flexibility will give Mr. O’Brien more opportunities to take CE courses on economic data to better help clients navigate the barrage of statistics released every month. The CE reform is the second policy revision NAPFA has made in the two months since Mr. Brown was appointed to head the organization. Earlier this month, the group eliminated its provisional member status. “All of these changes made sense to me, and they were in the works before I arrived,” Mr. Brown said.