Some advisors are deciding it's not worth the trouble to maintain multiple designations.aluxum/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Many advisors were encouraged to earn several professional designations to showcase their financial expertise at the start of their careers. But some are now opting out of the alphabet soup of acronyms.
Ian Wood, investment counsellor at Cardinal Capital Management Inc. in Winnipeg, earned 14 financial designations. But he struggled to understand how clients benefited from them.
“Am I getting any resources from maintaining them, or am I just filling out my business card?”
Over time, maintaining the standing for each designation also became an administrative headache, he says.
For example, each designation requires hours of continuing education a year. In Mr. Wood’s case, that worked out to more than 80 hours annually, with few opportunities to double up on CE content that could be used for different designations.
He says some require accredited CE from the association that administers the designation. Then, there are the renewal fees. Mr. Wood estimates he was spending more than $3,000 a year on fees for designations.
So, after conducting a cost-benefit analysis, he whittled his designation list down by half. His top two keepers are the CFP, which he calls the “gold standard” of financial planning designations, and the chartered investment manager (CIM), which allows him to practice as a registered portfolio manager.
Mr. Wood dropped designations with high renewal costs or that were no longer applicable to his clients’ financial needs. But he says he retains the knowledge from all the designations, which took years to acquire.
“Many were worth getting and I learned a lot, but once you’re done, there’s nothing else,” he says. “It doesn’t add any credibility. If anything, it increases the confusion in the marketplace for clients who are supposed to figure out which ones are high standards and which ones are something that took an hour to complete.”
Now that he’s worked with the same clients for years, he says they don’t care as much about designations. They’re more dialled in about the actual day-to-day financial planning work being done on their behalf.
“They care a lot more about your relationship with them and your ability to meet their goals,” Mr. Wood says.
Jeremy Orser, director of insurance advisory services at Yates Whitaker Private Wealth in Edmonton, also noticed that few clients cared about credentials once he proved his knowledge. He recently gave up his financial designations: certified financial planner (CFP), certified health insurance specialist (CHS) and chartered life underwriter (CLU).
Mr. Orser specializes in insurance planning for business owners and found most CE courses – not to mention finding and tracking them – had become a waste a time.
He decided his MBA was enough at this stage of his two-decade career. He says he earned the degree at a time when most advisors were just salespeople with licences to sell products.
“I work with a lot of business owners and an MBA is relevant to their issues,” he says, adding it doesn’t require a yearly fee to maintain. He works on risk management and insurance strategies for medical professionals. He no longer writes financial plans on his own but is part of a team-based approach that includes a CFP in the advice process.
He also says the lengthy CE process became more about checking a box and took time away from clients.
Omari Whyte, CFP at IPC Securities Corp. in Toronto, has held four designations for more than a decade, but he’s considering dropping one to get costs under control.
Holding multiple designations means a high cost to renew and maintain through CE credits. Mr. Whyte notes that his CLU designation alone costs him $1,200 a year, but it’s one from which he sees value for his business. He personally finds CE course work beneficial.
“It forces you to stay current, which is a necessary part of being able to serve the public and be relevant,” he says. “How else are you going to be bound to keeping your learning going? It’s really about balancing the cost with the benefit.”