Ready to get a retirement certification? Consider these factors

Visitors to FINRA's website for professional designations who search with the word "retirement" will find 24 different marks related to clients saving, investing and planning for life after work.

About 10% of the certifications listed there have that word in their name or purview, reflecting how "retirement has become this specialty worth specializing in," said Eric Ludwig, director of the Center for Retirement Income at The American College for Financial Services and author of a book called "The Retirement Specialist." 

A combination of the massive savings in 401(k) and individual retirement accounts, the complexity of accumulation and withdrawal plans, pivotal questions about Social Security and Medicare, and the many topics involving behavioral finance are prompting advisors to seek out those credentials. They include one mark overseen by The American College as the certifying organization, the retirement income certified professional (RICP), as well as the retirement management advisor (RMA), the certified professional retirement coach (CPRC) and the chartered retirement planning counselor (CRPC). 

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Reading more deeply into the alphabet soup

Each certification has different requirements and slightly distinct focuses under various certifying organizations. They're frequently an additional designation for financial advisors who have already obtained the profession's most respected and popular mark of certified financial planner. 

So many advisors and other industry professionals can point to the business results justifying their investments into such marks and the services that rigorous training and continuing education delivers to clients — even if the customers themselves don't grasp the significance of those strange-looking, often-trademarked abbreviations after their names on websites and social media pages.

"They shouldn't automatically think that their client or prospective client knows what that means," Ludwig said in an interview. "I do think it's worth considering, who are you serving, which designations are most applicable to you and then making sure you're marketing yourself that way."

Investments & Wealth Institute

He and Libet Anderson, the community engagement leader with Cetera Financial Group's Cetera Wealth Partners and current chair of the RMA mark's certifying organization, the Investments & Wealth Institute, say that an advisor's client bases and specialties help decide whether the time and money of getting a new mark will bring the appropriate return. Anderson, who is a certified investment management analyst (CIMA) and RMA, holds two of the organization's three marks. 

Even as an industry veteran who had spent decades in the field before getting her RMA, Anderson found the technical aspects of the so-called decumulation stage alongside Medicare and Social Security planning to be challenging and got intrigued by how those conversations tied into "behavioral finance and how your clients are wired and what that means," she said.

"They get scared and think they're going to run out of money, and that is a mind game," Anderson said of retirees thinking about people's increased longevity these days. "They read these things and they worry about running out, and you have to show them and constantly sit in front of them with the charts and the numbers."

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Practical and poetic implications

An advisor's niches and specialties, the answer to "what would benefit clients most?" and the applicability of the subject matter to the base's current timeline should weigh against the investment of time and money toward any certification, according to Jeffrey Czajka, an advisor coach who is the founder of training and consulting firm Advisor Growth Solutions. Besides the more traditional route of certifications that could take months or years to complete, he brought up programs that make shorter courses available to planners, such as another one provided through The American College, Ed Slott & Company's IRA Success seminars.

"You've got to look at, who are you working with, who are you serving the most, and what's going to help them the most?" Czajka said. "If you have a specialty niche, you've got to learn how to refine the messaging around it. But you can be successful and do quite well in a niche."

Those decisions carry deep importance to advisors and their clients, according to Kate Shannon, a vice president and wealth management advisor in Merrill's Wayzata, Minnesota-based branch. Speaking on a panel at last week's Association of African American Financial Advisors Women's Impact Initiative Network conference in Chicago, she responded to a question about one intentional choice she has made in her career that is now part of her professional legacy by citing the letters behind her name, the last line of a poem called "Poem 133: The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver and an earlier speaker's comments at the event.

"I have a CFP, I have a CPWA, I have a CTFA, I have a CPFA, a master's degree in philanthropy, learning and education," Shannon said. "All of that is only to say that I have intentionally become as knowledgeable — another woman on the stage mentioned it earlier today — become as knowledgeable as I can in service to the client, in service to your one wild and precious life. 'Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'"

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A lot of ground to cover, in a limited time

As advisors consider everything that is wrapped up in their choices about designations, issuer organizations like The American College are altering some of their programming as well. Starting last year, the organization changed its RICP program by revamping the instructional materials, creating an AI chatbot that answers prompts through the curriculum and other content from its courses and reducing the path to get the RICP to only two required classes for holders of the CFP or The American College's Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC), Ludwig noted.

The American College for Financial Services

"Students can complete each course in as fast as four weeks," he said. "If you have a lot of experience but you want to get through a course quicker, we certainly have that option."

At the same time, though, retirement planning entails many areas at once that all carry big ramifications. Laws and regulatory requirements, plans with guardrails but sufficient flexibility and any number of "critical" decisions around Social Security and Medicare enter into the equation when figuring out whether a client is fully prepared for retirement, Anderson said.

"Now you're talking about legacy issues and other things that they have concerns about — they all have different nuances that are very important," she said. "Not having someone who has that skillset to help you there could be monumental."