So far in India 21,688 candidates have enrolled for CFP Certification out of which 2,923 have cleared final exams and 1,409 are CFP Certificants*. Most probably ‘you’ are one among these numbers – just like me. Now the tougher part, how many of us are actually practicing financial planning and have established ourselves as professionals?

A tough question! Based on my interaction with the community members over the years, my guess is that the figure stands at around 200 i.e. who are offering comprehensive fee-based financial planning services and I am being optimistic about it. And I am really not sure about how many of them have established themselves as a ‘professional’ i.e. major revenues coming from fees and not commissions. (Number put across by me are only indicative and debatable & I intend to validate it in the coming days.)

Break up of Financial Planning Community in India
Category	Details	Numbers	Percentage
A	No. of established financial planners	??	??%
B	No. of practicing financial planners	200	0.92%
C	No. of CFP Certificants	1409	6.50%
D	No. passed CFP Certification final exams	2923	13.48%
E	No. enrolled for CFP Certification Program	21688	100.00%

 

These are hard facts for FP profession which is consistantly being potrayed as one of the most promising profession/career and still many of us hanging on to this belief. There are number of reasons doing rounds for this dismal progress of the profession in the last 5-10 years. We blame it on government, financial regulators, consumer demand, the board, financial product manufacturers; current standing of financial intermediaries, financial planning education structure… the list will go on and the critics are abundant.

But this platform is not to discuss or debate over who is responsible for this situation.Network FP is about helping each other as individuals to move from Category B/C/D/E to Category A. It’s about exploring what we as individuals can do to achieve our aspiration of being established financial planners. We have to prepare and position ourselves well to provide rational, holistic and unbiased advice. Consumer demand, regulations etc will evolve with time and there are clear signs of things falling in line to help this profession grow.

There is a greater urge today than ever before among financial intermediaries to transform into financial planning professionals. They want professional recognition like CAs, doctors, architects and lawyers, want to make a decent living out of fees, want to overcome the changes being brought about by financial regulators, want to be prepared for zero-load environment and some genuinely want to help their clients achieve live better financial lives.

On the other hand there is a new set of intelligent, smart and tech savvy youngsters looking forward to venturing into this career. And most probably they will find a way to directly start as a fee-based financial planner giving more value to clients than the intermediaries who haven’t made an attempt to transform themselves. Then it will be a matter of survival of the fittest.

Think about it and answer the following simple questions to make a start or move forward from your current situation. Any achievement starts with a commitment followed by a definite action.

1. What category are you in today?

2. What category do you want to be in?

3. In how many years you want to achieve it?

4. What’s your action plan to achieve it?

By the way, these are the same set of questions which are answered when we do financial planning for our clients. Let’s do it ourselves first! Either answer it to yourself orleave it as a comment on this page.

 

Authored by,

Sadique Neelgund

Founder

Network FP Knowledge solutions Pvt Ltd,

Mumbai

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