Focus on Financial Planning 2011

Merrick says accountants are the obvious pick to be the advisor of choice for a great many clients but most of them, especially public accountants, aren’t focused on individuals and spend the majority of their time handling corporate work instead.

“The real opportunity in the next decade is going to be the transfer of wealth, primarily business owners who will be relinquishing control (of their enterprises) and divesting hard assets into investing assets,” he says.

CARY LIST, president and CEO of the Financial Planning Standards Council, which develops and enforces professional standards for CFP professionals in Canada, says getting the CFP designation makes a lot of sense for many accountants.

“They’re already working in the same area, working with individuals on their accounting side and tax needs. It’s absolutely a strong fit for them,” he says.

List says he speaks from personal experience. As a chartered accountant back in the early 1990s, a colleague asked him if

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he could help develop some financial planning workshops geared towards people who were being offered retirement packages.

“I thought I was more than equipped to do it. As I started developing the programs and looking at what these people were facing, it became rapidly obvious to me how many gaps there were in my knowledge and skill set and how natural it was that I should have them as a natural extension of my training as an accountant,” he says.

In fact, List says accountants who keep their head in the sand about the benefits of a CFP may do so at their own peril.

“Absolutely there are threats (to their livelihoods). I don’t think a CFP is necessarily the right thing for people in insurance or in corporate tax in the Big Four. We’re talking about the broader community, people in the smaller-sized client marketplace. This is where the greatest opportunities exist,” he says.

List says the FPSC has been working for years to get CGAs and CAs to recognize the importance of pursuing a CFP to make themselves even more valuable to clients.

“It’s not for everybody but there’s absolutely a very good synergy there,” he says.

Of course, there’s no education like the school of life. Grant Skinner, CEO of Wellington West Pro Ice, a Winnipeg-based firm that provides “chief financial officer” services to more than 30 National Hockey League players and their families, says he believes the CFP is a worthwhile designation for people getting started in the business.

“I haven’t pursued it myself but I have 30 years of experience in a very niche market. At age 53, I didn’t need the CFP to add to my business card to say, ‘look what I’ve got.’ It’s more, ‘look at who I am.’ As a CA, I felt very comfortable with my training in financial planning. But if you want to get into wealth management (today), it’s a worthwhile designation to get,” he says.