CFP Board certifications

The board issues one credential, and it treats that credential as a professional standing rather than a test result. A candidate must satisfy four requirements the board calls the four E's: education through a CFP Board Registered Program and a bachelor's degree, the exam, several thousand hours of relevant experience, and an ethics declaration backed by a background check. Most applicants take between a year and a half and two years to clear them all, which is why the CFP certification sits among the heavier credentials on this site despite being a single exam.

What holding the mark commits you to

The obligations continue after the certificate arrives. Every year a CFP professional pays a certification fee and files a renewal application that reaffirms the board's Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. Every two years thirty hours of continuing education are due, two of them in an ethics course the board approves. A missed deadline triggers a late fee and can end in losing the right to use the marks. That ongoing supervision is the substance of the credential: the board's promise to the public is less that you once passed an exam than that you are still held to its standards.

• Aimed at people who give personal financial advice to households, which is where every exam scenario is set.
• Proves broad planning competence across tax, retirement, insurance, investments and estates, applied to a household.
• Does not prove investment analysis at the depth of an analyst's charter, or any knowledge of planning outside the United States.

For a reader choosing between finance credentials, the practical test is the client. If the work is advising a family on its whole financial life, the board's route is built for it; if the work is analysing securities or measuring an institution's risk, other bodies on this site fit better.