If you receive an award notice from the Consumers’ Research Council of America, don’t take the honor lightly.

It isn’t the responsibility that comes with the award that should give you pause: This isn’t the financial planners’ equivalent of the Miss America Pageant, where the winner has to assume a laundry list of responsibilities and make public appearances on behalf of the organization.

It’s the legitimacy of the award and its sponsoring organization that’s the problem. If you get the award letter, you can proudly proclaim yourself one of “America’s Top Financial Planners,” as recognized by the Consumers’ Research Council of America, but don’t accept the award without preparing yourself to answer questions about what the award really means.

Read this complete analysis of the impact at AdvisorFX (sign up for a free trial subscription with full access to all of the planning libraries and client presentations if you are not already a subscriber).

For previous coverage of professional designations in Advisor’s Journal, see SEC OKs CFP Board’s Request to Dig into Applicants’ Backgrounds (CC 11-88).

 Email This Post
This entry was posted on Friday, September 9th, 2011 at 6:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.