New Web Sites Designed To Improve Advisor Transparency

The College for Financial Planning launched a website that allows consumers, regulators and financial services firms to verify the status of professionals who use the college’s professional designations, the CFFP announced Wednesday.

Located at www.CFFPdesignations.com, the site will provide information about the CFFP’s designations, such as the requirements to obtain and maintain use of them. It also allows financial services firms, compliance professionals and regulators to verify that planners and advisors with the college’s designations after their names are actually allowed to use them.

Aside from the new industry-focused site, financial planners who are in good standing with the Greenwood Village, Col.-based CFFP will also be put on a much bigger stage, via the NASDAQ Stock Market.

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, of Washington, D.C., also announced Wednesday that it would post its list of certified financial planners on the site, www.nasdaq.com/advisor. Visitors there can search a nationwide database of 60,000 CFP professionals by name or geographic location. The listing will be grouped with the Nasdaq’s Financial Advisor search.

According to the International Association of Registered Financial Consultants, 89 designations, certifications and degrees are offered to financial services professionals.

Larry Rosenthal, president of Financial Planning Services, in Manassas, Va., said the CFFP’s new website sounds like a benefit for the public. “I think transparency is always good,” he said. “The more important an issue is to someone the more they will seek out specialty professionals.” Rosenthal added that as a financial planner—or any professional, for that matter—progresses in his or her career the more designations and education they obtain the better off their clients will be.