Letter from Eastcheap: May
We are making moves to ensure that financial planning is seen as an important profession, writes CISI Chief Executive Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI
One of the most distinctive benefits of being a CFPTM professional is becoming part of a growing global community of 162,000 professionals across 26 worldwide territories. Noel Maye, the Financial Planning Standards Board Chief Executive, visited us recently during his UK trip as part of a global strategy to raise awareness of the CFPTM designation amongst media, consumers and regulators. He commended CISI on its commitment to maintaining “the competency, ethics and professional standards for CFPTM certification in the UK”.
Part of our demonstration of commitment to those important values is the completion of our IntegrityMatters test. To date, 1,123 financial planning members have taken the test, so we are on the home run. I trust that when I next write, the rest of our 2,000 strong community will have completed it, and I encourage you all to do so. Integrity, ethics, professional standards and code of conduct are important themes for consumers. This was echoed by Isobel Langton, chief executive of Royal London’s intermediary business when she said of becoming one of our latest corporate members: “We share the CISI’s commitment to high standards of excellence and professionalism, understand the value of impartial financial advice and are absolutely committed to working with the intermediary market to deliver the best outcome for customers.”
We are also delighted to welcome Alliance Trust Savings as a Corporate Member and we look forward to engaging with them throughout 2016/2017. In order to accelerate our drive to grow the profession in the UK, we have created the new position of Head of Financial Planning. This is a full time, CISI staff post and is critical in our next phase for promoting the profession. This will help us shape it so that it is viewed not only as an important career choice but also as an essential, trusted and go-to advisory service for consumers. This initiative has received good media coverage and a positive response.
The development of our new level 4 Certificate in Financial Planning and Advice is well under way and the workbook will be available in June for the exam to go live on 31 August. This exam will sit in our RDR-compliant level 4 qualification, the Investment Advice Diploma. It will also be the first unit of the Certificate in Paraplanning and the Diploma in Financial Planning. The main autumn event this year in my diary is the Financial Planning Annual Conference between 3 and 5 October at the Celtic Manor, with a well-deserved outstanding reputation as the largest annual gathering of the top planners and paraplanners in the UK. I look forward to meeting you all there.