Remarks by Peter G. Volpé CFP
FPSC 2006 Incoming Chair
FPSC 5th Annual Board Reception
Victoria, B.C.
June 15, 2006
Good Afternoon. On behalf of FPSC's Board of Directors, Welcome. It's wonderful to be here in beautiful Victoria.
As Ann mentioned, this is our 5th Annual Board Reception. And I'm happy to say that I have had the good fortune and privilege of attending every one of them. Our first one in 2002 just happened to coincide with my first year on the FPSC Board of Directors. I had been appointed to fill one of the two newly created independent seats on the board. Now, four years later, I finally get to step up to the podium as Incoming Chair and tell you, my fellow CFP professionals and other supporters of FPSC's , how honoured I am to serve our profession through involvement with its standards-setting body. I am very pleased to be able to give back to a profession that has been so very good to me for many years.
And I don't use the term "profession" lightly.
While we still hear the words "evolving" and "emerging" to describe our profession - a "profession" it is. What we do as financial planners - the services we provide to our clients; and the responsibilities that we bear in helping people find ways to live the lives they want now and in the future - had better be worthy of the title "profession." Because it is nothing short of "professionalism" that is expected of us.
Professionalism is what is expected of us by our clients; expected of us by our standards-setting and enforcement organization (FPSC); by our employers and by our colleagues. In fact, everyone is counting on CFP professionals to live up to their reputation of representing, in all that we do, the highest financial planning professional standards of competency and ethics that exist in Canada today. They are all counting on us to be the best we can be.
And that's what these Board Receptions are all about. We are here today to celebrate and show our appreciation for our collective commitment to professional excellence - a commitment we make to benefit everyone - you, me, our employers, our colleagues, our communities, and, of course, our clients.
We're also here to celebrate, as we have at past receptions, the achievements of individuals named to FPSC's President's List for their outstanding performance on the previous year's CFP Examination sittings. And we are here to continue our celebration of the achievements of the 2006 recipient of the annual Donald J. Johnston Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Profession of Financial Planning in Canada. We inaugurated this award in January in Toronto at FPSC's 10th anniversary celebration. It was there that we announced FPSC President, Mr. Don Johnston, as the inspiration for the new award and as its first recipient. In the future, annual recipients will be announced at the Annual Board Appreciation Receptions, but, here today, we will instead continue the celebration begun in January - a celebration and acknowledgement of Don's profound achievements accomplished through FPSC over the past 10 years.
As the posters around the room attest, there have been many, many achievements to celebrate.
You know, all of us here work in an industry, and have lived in a decade, where change seems to be the only constant. Yet through all its years, FPSC, under Don's leadership, has remained unwaveringly committed to its mission of leading our profession to where we can be proud to say "I am a CFP professional." Or to say that we are somehow connected to the CFP community of professionals and to the organization that sets and enforces the standards that define the profession of financial planning in Canada.
Take a look at what is written on the posters around this room and you'll see just how far FPSC has come in its first decade. And then take a look around the room at the people who are making it all happen today. These people are you. You, Don, those named to the President's List, financial planning educators and their students, representatives of supporting organizations and businesses who hire CFP professionals, FPSC staff and volunteers - anyone and everyone who is helping further FPSC's mission are why we instituted four years ago the annual FPSC Board Appreciation Reception. It's our way of expressing the Board's appreciation of all of you.
And it's more. Recognizing we're all in this together, it's also your opportunity to say thank you to each other. All of us, one way or another, contribute to and benefit from association with the profession of financial planning as it is represented by CFP. All of us contribute to and benefit from the CFP brand as it is perceived today.
And today, I am delighted to report that the perception of the CFP and all it stands for is very good. According to a recent survey conducted for FPSC by an independent market-research firm, one in three adult Canadians with household incomes in excess of $80.000 is very familiar with the CFP brand. And they strongly associate CFP with the positive attributes of "good client service" and "professional competency." These attributes are expressed by clients in terms of "accessibility to and empathy for the client", and in terms of "breadth and depth of financial planning knowledge and cutting-edge advice". No other financial services credential - not any of the accounting designations, not CLU, R.F.P. or CFA or any other - is as strongly associated with these important professional service attributes as is the CFP credential. And no other credential more readily comes mind when Canadian's are asked which professionals can help with them with the management of their personal financial affairs.
Yes indeed we have come a long way. Yet, as always in the pursuit of excellence, there remains more to do and farther to go.
So no one at FPSC, no one here, should plan to rest on his or her laurels.
Well… No one, that is, except for our next speaker: retiring FPSC President and CEO, Don Johnston. While the rest of us continue to develop, enforce, promote and live up to the CFP brand every day, Don will be planting and nurturing trees in Teaswater, Ontario. Undoubtedly he will be doing so with the same vigour and sense of purpose with which he planted the seeds that led to so successful an organization as FPSC, and the same determination with which he nurtured it to its current role as leader of the development of the financial planning profession through CFP certification in Canada, and around the world. As one of his admirers said of Don's pending retirement: "The Financial Planning profession's loss is Ontario Forestry Management's gain."
Don, will be retiring as of July 1st. Thankfully for all of us, he is doing so having ensured that FPSC remains in good hands. While we continue our search for his successor, FPSC's operations will remain in the very good hands of the management team that will be led in the interim by FPSC COO and EVP Standards, Cary List. Cary will take on the additional role of acting President and CEO once Don retires.
I am certain Don retires from his decade-long work knowing that each of us on the Board, everyone back at the FPSC offices, all of you in this room and in the CFP community at large will continue to live up to our commitments as stewards of the profession of financial planning. After all, what else can we do? Thanks to Don and a decade of work at FPSC, it's expected of us.
Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your commitment to the on-going development of the profession of financial planning through CFP certification.
Now, please join me in welcoming to the podium one last time, the founding, and for two more weeks yet, FPSC President and CEO, Mr. Donald J. Johnston.
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