What are CFPs supposed to know?

Saturday November 23, 2024

To be a Certified Financial Planner, you have to have a bachelor's degree (in anything) and do (usually) seven CFP Board-approved classes and pass a test covering many topics. The classes are Fundamentals, Insurance, Investments, Tax, Retirement, Estate, and a capstone case study class. Then you do 30 hours of continuing education every two years.

The CFP Board lists about 250 institutions with approved offerings, mostly universities. These can be outsourced offerings, for example from Cerifi's Dalton Education or Greene Consulting's Financial Planner Program or Zahn.

There seem to be two main lines of textbooks. One is Cerifi's Money Education, which claims to by “chosen by 200 universities nationwide.” The other is from National Underwriter, mostly in their Leimberg Library. There used to be books from Keir, but they joined forces with Money Education.

From Open Syllabus, it isn't clear which books are most popular. I find one entry each for two of the Money Education books, and no mention of Leimberg books. It seems like Kaplan and Danko also have materials, but may only offer them to participants in their courses.

There are also lots of exam prep and study materials. Zahn for example makes supplemental books and flashcards, and Money Education has “QuickSheets.”

There's also a thing called a financial calculator, which can be a physical object that CFPs may learn to use.

For continuing education, every two years a CFP has to do 30 hours of programs, selected from thousands that are approved by the CFP Board.