A core requirement of any bona fide profession is to have a professional Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct that must be adhered to and a disciplinary enforcement process to remove professionals who don’t honor the standards. And while technically the CFP Board is not a sanctioned regulatory body but a 501(c)(3) public charity that owns a trademark for the CFP marks – and grants CFP certificants the right to use its private trademark in exchange for following its stipulated rules – the organization has been attempting to make financial planning a (more) recognized profession by similarly establishing a Code of Ethics, requiring CFP certificants to adhere to it, and enforcing against those who don’t follow its rules.
Accordingly, to the extent that last year, the CFP Board decided to lift its Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct to formally adopt a fiduciary standard for all financial advice (or really, financial recommendations of any type) provided by CFP certificants, the CFP Board is now taking steps to refine its processes for enforcing those standards, with a series of proposed updates to its Disciplinary Rules and Procedures.
Yet alongside a number of more process-oriented refinements, the CFP Board has also put forth a rather controversial proposal: to allow CFP certificants to expunge their one-time public disciplinary sanctions (e.g., a public letter of admonition or a temporary suspension of the CFP marks) after 5 years. Despite the fact that recent studies of broker recidivism have found that those who have even “just” one misconduct disclosure on BrokerCheck are a whopping 5X more likely to engage in repeat misconduct, and a more recent study found that those who request expungement of their disciplinary records are even more likely to end out being repeat offenders anyway! While in the internet age when “nothing dies” once it’s online, it’s not even clear if expungement of a public sanction from the CFP Board’s website really effectively vacates a CFP certificant’s record anyway… or just makes it harder for the public to find the information they need.
And so at a minimum, if the CFP Board is going to proceed with an expungement process, it should seriously consider more “aggravating factors” like additional private censures or the extent of client harm before automatically granting a time-based expungement, separate the process of expunging public sanctions from “just” bankruptcy-only disclosures, and apply a probationary period to expungement where any expunged sanctions are returned in the event of a future public sanction or private censure.
Ideally, though, the CFP Board should move away from its proposal for expungement, and instead simply provide the means for CFP certificants to add an explanation to their public disciplinary records (akin to what FINRA already provides), and perhaps better aid consumers by clarifying the nature of the infraction and whether or to what extent client harm actually occurred or not. And to the extent there is concern about an uptick in violation of the new fiduciary Standards of Conduct when they launch later this year, consider adopting a more lenient transition enforcement policy for the first year… rather than forgiving all 2020 infractions by 2025 regardless of their actual severity and client harm!
Fortunately, at this point, the proposed Disciplinary Rules and Procedures are just that – proposed – which means CFP certificants still have an opportunity to submit their own Public Comment letter expressing support or concern for the proposals to the CFP Board by January 29th.
source https://www.kitces.com/blog/cfp-board-expungement-public-sanction-proposed-discplinary-rules-procedures-petition-remove-publication/
No comments:
Post a Comment