Being a Chartered Financial Planner matters.
Being a Chartered Financial Planning firm matters even more.
If you needed an accountant, would you look through a list of firms and actively favour the non Chartered or Certified firms? Of course you wouldn't, because being Chartered matters. It is a mark of professionalism and recognition of the holders skills and expertise.
Continuing our observations as to why professionalism is so important in our industry, we care passionately that as many of our staff as possible become Chartered Financial Planners. All the staff we employ are on a path to qualifications and we expect, not ask, all paraplanners and advisers to attain Chartered Financial Planner status within a reasonable period of employment.
We don't "need" to do this, since the industry required qualification level for advisers is much lower than Chartered status and indeed there are no minimum qualification levels for paraplanners. Nevertheless we take the view that our advisers and paraplanners are key to formulating financial planning solutions for our clients and we believe that our clients deserve to be served by the highest calibre individuals available with both the knowledge and the experience necessary to support their work.
We often struggle to recruit, because we expect so much from our staff relative to many other firms in the industry. We make a point of spelling out just how much study will be required to achieve Chartered status when interviewing candidates. We never hear from some of these people again and nor do we want to, because this isn't just a job, it is a career with prospects and responsibilities.
I may be ranting now and I don't wish to disparage our profession as a whole, because the message is spreading, albeit slowly, but Chartered Financial Planner status is the pinnacle of our industry in terms of credibility and status. The numbers attaining this level are growing, but we remain one of only just over 300 Chartered firms in the UK.
We believe that our title represents a huge opportunity for us to talk to our clients about the merits of Chartered Financial Planner status and the advantages it brings.
We often hear that exams are just a bit of paper that don't mean anything in the real world when experience is the key. Exams alone are not everything, but being given the opportunity to use the knowledge gained from exams in our day to day jobs is vital and the combination of the two offers proven success.
Qualifications and ongoing study show a commitment to our industry and self improvement. Our industry is never static: legislation, pensions, tax and investments are an ever changing target and we need to ensure that we provide our clients with up to the minute advice at all times - we can only do this through ongoing development. Retaining Chartered status is no mean feat either. We all have to demonstrate our ongoing commitment not just to study, but to attendance at seminars, specialist knowledge, structured discussions etc without all of that ongoing professional development, even those who have attained Chartered Financial Planner status would fall behind.
Our lives would certainly be easier if we didn't commit wholeheartedly to Chartered Financial Planner status. We would find it easier to recruit, we would have more spare time on our hands and we would still be able to do our jobs - but in our opinion we wouldn't be able to do our jobs as well as would want.
Our industry is pushing people towards improved levels of qualifications and not before time in our opinion. We worry about how successful our industry will be at shaking off it's tradition of doing as little study as possible to stay in business and make money. We also worry about how clients perceive their advisor and if they truly understand the forthcoming changes in our industry and what it means to be Chartered. We hope they do and that their adviser has fully explained their own commitment to ongoing study. Our clients understand that Chartered status matters. It is a central part of our proposition and we want to shout about it.
If an adviser truly believes that every client matters and providing the best service to them matters, then it follows that Chartered status should matter too.
Please contact me at
jon.telford@msfs.co.uk if you would like to discuss how this matters to you in greater detail.