THE LONG VIEW

Dan Moisand

The financial advisory industry has been around decades, but it still needs professional respect.

HE TERM“ FINANCIAL PLANNING PROFESSION” HAS BEEN used for decades. I’ ve used the term in most columns I’ ve penned, often expressing worry about the profession’ s future development. But what is the financial planning profession exactly, and are you in it?

“ Profession” has many meanings. When an amateur baker opens a shop or an athlete starts to compete for money, we say they have turned professional. When a party goes off without a hitch or a meeting proceeds smoothly, we say they ran professionally.

When I speak of the financial planning profession, I mean profession in the vein of the traditional professions like medicine and law. I am invoking the most noble meanings of the word, because financial planning shares many of the same attributes as those other fields.

An Important Purpose

Professionals serve an important purpose for society. Those who are authorized to help the public make health and legal decisions receive this status because those decisions are critical. Everyone is affected by health and legal matters.

Likewise, everyone is affected by money. A society that makes good financial decisions is better off than one that does not. Planners serve a societal need by helping people make good decisions.

A society that makes good financial decisions is better off than one that does not. Planners serve a societal need by helping people make good decisions.

Professionals Are Competent

Doctors and lawyers prove their competency through education, exams and licensing. The closest thing we have to medical school and bar exams are CFP Board-registered programs and the CFP exam. It’ s the simplest way to show the public one has competence as a general practitioner of financial planning.

A profession should also rest on a bona fide body of knowledge: a set of concepts and terminology. The reason some medications are prescribed for similar maladies is that they’ ve been tested and shown to help.

Today, there are more financial planning PhDs than ever doing research. Practitioners need the work of these academics to see evidence that their methods work— and so they’ re able to adjust as new evidence emerges. But the academics, meanwhile, need to hear from the planning professionals doing the work on the ground, because the practitioners are encountering new questions that need answering.

Pro Bono Work

Another great mark of a profession is that it offers help to those in need. In 2023, the CFP Board adopted a formal resolution encouraging all its mark holders to perform at least 20 hours of pro bono work for people in need and underserved communities. The board also encouraged firms to support the pro bono efforts of their staffers, and it’ s considering granting some CE hours for pro bono work.

24 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | JUNE 2025 WWW. FA-MAG. COM