A financial planner or personal financial planner is a qualified financial advisor. Practicing in full service personal finance, they advise clients on investments, insurance, tax, retirement and estate planning.
As a general rule, a financial planner’s work can:
A fiduciary is a person who holds a legal or ethical relationship of trust with one or more other parties (legal person or group of persons). Typically, a fiduciary prudently takes care of money or other assets for another person. One party, for example, a corporate trust company or the trust department of a bank, acts in a fiduciary capacity to another party, who, for example, has entrusted funds to the fiduciary for safekeeping or investment. Likewise, financial advisers, financial planners, and asset managers, including managers of pension plans, endowments, and other tax-exempt assets, are considered fiduciaries under applicable statutes and laws. In a fiduciary relationship, one person, in a position of vulnerability, justifiably vests confidence, good faith, reliance, and trust in another whose aid, advice, or protection is sought in some matter. In such a relation, good conscience requires the fiduciary to act at all times for the sole benefit and interest of the one who trusts.
Fiduciary duties in a financial sense exist to ensure that those who manage other people's money act in their beneficiaries' interests, rather than serving their own interests.
The Certified Financial Planner (CFP) certification is a professional certification mark for financial planners conferred by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board) in the United States, and by 25 other organizations affiliated with the Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB), the owner of the CFP mark outside of the United States. The certification is managed by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board), which was founded in 1985 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization; it is neither a government designation nor an accredited degree.
To receive authorization to use the designation, a candidate must meet education, examination, experience, and ethics requirements and pay an ongoing certification fee.