The Canadian Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors proposed a merger of itself with the Canadian Association of Financial Planners in a letter sent last week.

CAIFA says it believes the creation of a single Canadian organization responsible for the standards of its professional members will best meet the needs of both advisors and the consumers of financial products and services.

The letter, in the form of a proposal, was sent to CAFP members across the country. In CAIFA’s view, such a merger would strengthen the collective voice of professional advisors at the regulatory and legislative level and reduce consumer confusion. In the letter, Jim Rogers, CAIFA chair and a member of both CAIFA and CAFP, says he is sure most CAFP members would like to see the merger of the two associations.

“In our recently conducted focus groups with CAFP members, most wanted a single organization,” says Rogers. “Our findings say that members look to their association for ethics and practice standards, continuing education, networking, greater public recognition and effective advocacy–in addition to member practice management programs and benefits. CAIFA is committed to all of these and so, we believe, is the CAFP. So why not combine our efforts to better serve our collective membership?”

In its two-part proposal, CAIFA asked CAFP members to consider a serious, detailed examination of a possible brand-new professional membership organization. It would likely have a new name, incorporating both CAFP and CAIFA. As well it asks CAFP members to acknowledge the role of the Financial Planners Standards Council and the CFP designation, which it administers.

CAIFA would be committed to formulating a path wherein the standard-setting role of each of the three separate bodies today (CAFP, CAIFA, FPSC) would be harmonized. The proposal acknowledges that a process would need to be established to reconcile differing standards and to ensure the highest of the three that might exist today would be the one adopted. CAIFA believes that further advancement of both performance and application standards are required.

CAIFA is asking CAFP members for support in its bid for a single organization and is asking CAFP members to submit comments to a special e-mail address at cafpquestions@caifa.com. The responses will be aggregated and shared on a “no-names” basis with CAFP’s executive committee in order to set in motion a formal process of establishing a single organization for the benefit of both respective members and the consumers of financial products and services.

CAIFA and CAFP leaders entered into merger talks at the beginning of 2000, but weren’t able to come to a resolution. Rogers is hoping that putting this matter directly to CAFP members will more likely result in a common path being chosen by both organizations.

CAIFA says it believes that the process of financial planning is uniquely different from the process of marketing financial products and should be regulated differently.

In a different letter sent September 21, to the Joint Forum of Financial Market Regulators, CAIFA stated that regulating financial planning is not part of the job description of the regulators for securities and insurance products. If the people who regulate product sales jump in to regulate financial planning, they “would only distort and frustrate the development of proper regulation for that emerging discipline,” the letter says.

“It’s simply not appropriate for the regulators of financial products to oversee the regulation of financial planning,” says CAIFA’s chair Jim Rogers. “So the question becomes ‘Who should?’ In our view, a single organization responsible for standard setting is the solution, and that’s another reason we favour CAIFA and CAFP formally getting together. When you have different voices competing with each other, even when they’re saying essentially the same thing, it gets confusing. Regulators, and most importantly, consumers can become frustrated trying to sort through the messages sent by Canada’s two professional planning associations.”