Building a Diverse Practice: The Value of CFP® Certification to Female Advisors

Building a Diverse Practice: The Value of CFP® Certification to Female Advisors highlights the distinctive strengths and characteristics that female CFP® professionals bring to wealth management practices and clients. Using results from a survey of 400 U.S. financial professionals, in addition to other CFP Board data, this report compares female CFP® professionals to male CFP® professionals and non-certified female advisors across a wide range of metrics, including AUM, career satisfaction, confidence and planning focus.

 

Building a Diverse Practice builds on earlier research from CFP Board and Aite Group examining how CFP® professional practices are better positioned than their non-certified peers to capitalize on the wealth management industry’s shift towards financial planning.

The paper serves two purposes:

1. Emphasize the importance of having female CFP® professionals in the wealth management industry
2. Underscore the urgent need for firms to recruit more client-facing female advisors who are CFP® professionals

Aite Group’s research for this study follows a survey of 400 U.S. financial advisors fielded in Q3 2019 as well as survey data from CFP Board to increase the sample size of female CFP® professionals. The survey included 80 female CFP® professionals and 54 female advisors without CFP® certification. The analysis also compares the female CFP® professionals to 186 male CFP® professionals.

Firms of all sizes are expanding the areas of advice that their advisors address with clients — and female CFP® professionals are especially positioned for this trend, as they are well invested in providing holistic financial planning services to their clients.

Infographic Series

Download and share our infographics highlighting key data points from the Building a Diverse Practice report.

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