Financial planning is growing as a profession around the world, according to an organization that sets standards for its practitioners.
A survey by the Financial Planning Standards Board, which awards certified financial planner designations internationally, shows that 53% of planners outside the United States have become certified within the last five years and 80% within the last 10 years. Many of the new financial planners are in emerging markets in Asia and South America.
“We see this as a positive sign that there's a lot of momentum coming to
financial planning,” said Noel Maye, chief executive of the Financial Planning Standards Board.
Mr. Maye announced the findings of the study prior to the kickoff of the organization's annual meeting in Washington. The survey was conducted from November 2009 through last March. A total of 11,147 international CFP mark holders responded.
The international organization works with the Certified Financial Planning Board of Standards Inc., its U.S. counterpart, to establish and enforce professional standards of conduct for the sector, including a fiduciary responsibility to clients. The FPSB estimates that about 140,000 investment advisers worldwide will hold the CFP mark by the end of 2011. About 62,000 of them reside in the United States.
The survey provided evidence that CFP holders are taking the requirements of the designation seriously, according to Mr. Maye. Respondents listed complying with financial laws and regulations, adhering to a professional code of ethics and acting in the best interests of clients as their most important duties.
“Our findings are giving us confidence in the commitment of CFP professionals globally to acting ethically and to putting their clients' interests first,” Mr. Maye said.
In an effort to develop a global CFP community, the international board today launched a blog, Financial Planet (financialplanet.org). The website will feature posts by financial planners who discuss the state of the field in their countries.
“We're inviting people to start a conversation about professionalism,” Mr. Maye said.
The dialogue on the site — which features initial posts from India, Brazil, Korea, South Africa and the United States — may reveal, as the survey did, that there are many similarities among planning sectors around the world.
For instance, the majority of CFP professionals are male and between the ages of 35 and 44 in the 24 territories where the international board has member organizations. The outlier is China, where 56% of CFP mark holders are women and the average age of a practitioner is between 25 and 34.
The gender gap is more pronounced and practitioners are older in countries where the mark has been offered longer, such as Austria, Germany, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and Britain.
The most experienced financial planners are in Britain and New Zealand, while Malaysia, China and Brazil have the most newly minted planners.
The survey also showed that 90% of CFP professionals have a college degree. Everyone in China holding the CFP mark earned a bachelor's degree.
As planners from around the world communicate, one of the topics they're most likely to focus on is regulation. The implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in the United States is causing ripples beyond the U.S. borders, while financial markets become increasingly global.
“This notion of national regulation is a thing of the past,” Mr. Maye said.
