Advocacy & Objectives

FPAC advocates for the standardization of the title of ‘financial planner’.

Only those who have the training, the experience, the governing standards, and one of the recognized designations should be able to call themselves a financial planner.

And only those who can truly call themselves a financial planner — only advisors with CFP, R.F.P. or F. Pl. designations and in good standing — should be able to give financial planning advice.

Just as our members take The Fiduciary Pledge, our position is that the fiduciary standard should become the norm.

We believe the advisor-client relationship constitutes a fiduciary responsibility, and advisors must abide with everything that entails.

As such, FPAC advocates that the fiduciary standard of care should be adopted — and enforced — industry-wide.

Compensation structures within financial services have not always been transparent or fair to clients, who are at a disadvantage in understanding them.

Embedded compensation, ‘soft-dollar’ compensation, indirect compensation like gifts or perks, and lifetime vesting of insurance policies are all practices that should be banned.

These policy changes are a starting place, and examples of a wide-range of compensation reforms for which FPAC advocates.

In the past, financial planning arose from the world of product sales, but the future of the profession is so much more than that.

To achieve our field’s full potential, FPAC advocates for the proactive development of the financial planning profession.

From service providers to tech startups, from regulators to knowledge repositories, from empirical evidence to the career paths of young advisors — our approach is focused on the financial planning ecosystem as a whole.