Education Requirements

A bachelor’s degree is required to obtain your financial planning certification. As a first step to CFP® certification, you must master nearly 100 integrated financial courses.   According to CFP.net, the topics cover major financial planning areas such as:

    •   General principles of financial planning
    •   Insurance planning and risk management
    •   Employee benefits planning
    •   Investment planning
    •   Income tax planning
    •   Retirement planning
    •   Estate planning

Bachelor’s Degree Requirement.

In addition to completing financial courses that cover important topics required for a financial planning certification, a bachelor’s degree (or higher), or its equivalent, from an accredited college or university is required to attain CFP® certification. The bachelor’s degree requirement is a condition of initial financial planning certification; it is not a requirement to be eligible to take the CFP® Certification Examination. After you pass the CFP® Certification Examination, you will be required to provide evidence (official transcript from the degree-granting institution) that you hold a qualified bachelor’s degree or higher degree.

Challenge Status.

CFP Board has approved specific academic degrees and professional credentials as fulfilling the education requirement for CFP® certification. If you have one of the following degrees or credentials, you will automatically be eligible to apply for the CFP® Certification Examination:

    •    Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC)
    •    Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU)
    •    Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®)
    •    Ph.D. in business or economics*
    •    Doctor of Business Administration*
    •    Licensed attorney – inactive license acceptable**
    •    Licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) – inactive license acceptable**

Only the degrees and credentials listed above are approved for challenging the CFP® Certification Examination. In addition, the Certified Employee Benefits Specialists (CEBS) credential plus the addition of two courses will qualify an individual to apply for the CFP® Certification Examination.
If your degree or credential is not on the list above, you may wish to consult the transcript review process as an alternate route to the CFP® Certification Examination.

Transcript Review.

CFP Board recognizes that you may have covered some of the components in CFP Board’s financial planning topic list through previous educational coursework not taken through a CFP Board-Registered Program. CFP Board will consider granting credit towards the educational component required for CFP® certification if:

  • You can demonstrate that you have successfully completed equivalent upper-division level college or university coursework at a regionally-accredited college or university; and/or
  • You have one of the credentials listed below that CFP Board has pre-approved for partial credit towards the educational component.

For more information regarding education requirements to acquire your financial planning certification, please visit:
cfpnet