Scholarship targets people underrepresented in financial planning

A new scholarship offered through the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. aims to increase the number of financial planners from groups that are underrepresented in the profession.

The CFP Board Center for Financial Planning and Mission Wealth Management on Tuesday launched Mission Wealth Scholars. The program will award $5,000 scholarships to students who “have a demonstrated financial need or must be from the financial planning profession’s underrepresented populations in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation,” the CFP Board said in a statement.

Four scholarships will be awarded each year for four years, for a total of 16 over the course of the initiative. The program has been established with a $100,000 commitment from Mission Wealth.

Eligible students must be enrolled in undergraduate or certificate-level CFP Board-registered programs at colleges or universities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Texas or Washington state. Residents of the specified states who studying in an online program also are eligible.

It’s the second recently announced CFP scholarship for students who are from underrepresented populations. Earlier this month, the CFP Board established the LeCount R. Davis CFP Scholarship, which provides $5,000 scholarships to Black and African American students who are seeking to obtain the CFP credential.

Like the Davis scholarship, the Mission Wealth Scholars program’s goal is to make the financial planning profession more inclusive. It is doing so by targeting socioeconomic status — financial need — as well as racial, ethnic and other forms of diversity.

“It’s for anyone who wouldn’t have access,” said Seth Streeter, founder and chief impact officer at Mission Wealth Management. “We provide access.”

Mission Wealth — a registered investment advisory firm with 84 staff members, $4.8 billion in assets under management and regional hubs in Santa Barbara, California, Austin, Texas, and Chicago — has been focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion.

As more people from different kinds of backgrounds enter financial planning, it strengthens the profession and individual firms, Streeter said.

“It’s the culture improvements, the innovation improvements, the team improvements … and growing more market share by attracting more diverse clients,” he said.

Streeter said he has noticed that on firm retreats, staff members are opening up more to each other thanks to the firm’s increased diversity emphasis.

“We want everyone to feel safe, feel accepted and celebrate their differences,” he said. “We feel our secret sauce is our culture and how we show caring.”

Last year, there were 92,055 CFPs in the United States. That community included a record number of women and significantly higher numbers of Black and Hispanic CFPs, although the latter two categories represent a small fraction of CFPs.

“CFP Board’s partnership with Mission Wealth represents another step forward in our efforts to expand the financial planning talent pipeline and diversify the profession,” CFP Board CEO Kevin Keller said in the statement. “The Mission Wealth Scholars program will help us usher in the next generation of talented CFP professionals.”

The CFP Board sets and enforces the competency and ethical standards related to the designation.