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May 31, 2007 at 08:00 PM
The Board of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards adopted on May 24 a revised version of its code of ethics, adding new language that requires all 54,000 CFPs to “at all times place the interest of the client ahead of his or her own.” The Board’s new Standards of Professional Conduct, which takes effect July 1, 2008, replaces what the Board called in a statement “a lower standard of ‘reasonable and professional judgment’” that was contained in its current Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility. The Standards also requires that CFPs who “provide financial planning services do so with the duty of care of a ‘fiduciary’” which the Board statement says is “partly defined as acting ‘in the best interest of the client.”
Karen Schaeffer, chair of the CFP Board’s board, said in the statement that the Board believes “these updated standards reflect the level of ethical service the public deserves from financial planning professionals.”
The revised code went through two drafts since the process began in 2005, with comments reviewed by and final recommendations made by a three-member Board-appointed Ethics Task Force, all of whom are CFP Board members, led by Marilyn Capelli Dimitroff.
