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June 23, 2016 at 10:56 AM
Last November, the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards announced the launch of an ambitious initiative, the Center for Financial Planning, with initial financial support from TD Ameritrade. Board CEO Kevin Keller said in an interview then that the Board was worried about “workforce development” and a lack of diversity in the current CFP population, and sitting as it does “at the crossroads” of the “supply and demand” dynamics of the profession, the Center constituted the Board’s response to the profession’s human capital issue.
In January, the Board named its managing director for public policy and communications, Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis, as executive director of the Center. In an interview Tuesday at ThinkAdvisor’s New York offices, Keller and Mohrman-Gillis provided an update on the Center, clarifying its goals and reporting on the deliberations of a Design Summit it held in January that included 42 guests who are advisor industry household names.
That Summit, held in Washington Jan. 14, was attended by such luminaries as Mark Tibergien, Kate Healy, Roy Diliberto, Blaine Aikin, David Canter, Tim Kochis and Janet Stanzak, in addition to Center leaders Bob Glovsky, Eleanor Blayney, Keller and Mohrman-Gillis (who was named to Investment Advisor’s IA 25 for 2016).
The Center’s agenda for 2016-2017 was “informed and guided” by its Advisory Council, headed by noted planner Glovsky, with “impetus” from Summit attendees, Mohrman-Gillis said. The Board recognized as early as 2009, Mohrman-Gillis said, that there were “systemic problems” within the profession’s membership makeup, and decided to address the “systemic cultural biases” that have led to a paucity within the CFP ranks of women, people of color and younger people, and the need to address the “shortage of tenure-track professors” teaching financial planning, specifically in business schools, at major research universities.
Thus the Center’s three-pronged focus on addressing the planner diversity issue, work force development — bringing more people, and younger people into the profession — and building an “academic home” for the profession. That focus is being supported by five CFP Board staffers, Keller said.
On diversity, since “you can’t be what you can’t see,” in Mohrman-Gillis’ words, Keller said the Center has already enlisted over 100 CFPs to be mentors. Hoping to replicate its Women’s Initiative’s (WIN) “seminal research” from 2014 on how to attract and retain more women as planners, the Center plans to hold a racial diversity summit in 2017 to find specific prescriptions to build more diversity among CFP certificants.
Since women in the work force often “can get off track” in their careers due to family care issues, they “need encouragement,” Mohrman-Gillis said, to get back into the work force and stay there. Noting that only 23% of CFPs are women, increasing that percentage is behind the Center’s WIN-to-WIN “women mentoring women” program, announced earlier this month.
Turning to work force development, the Center plans to launch a pilot “relaunch” program to encourage women and younger people to enter the profession. The Center will conduct research on “what are the best practices” to entice younger people into the profession, Mohrman-Gillis said, including the right way to run internship programs.
