In Ontario’s latest title protection dust-up, a credentialing body was offering one of its financial-planning credentials on an equivalency basis — raising questions about whether equivalency should be allowed under the regime overseen by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA).
In a recent — and now ostensibly deferred — marketing campaign, the Canadian Institute of Financial Planning (CIFP) offered its chartered financial planner credential for a fee to those with a different credential approved for use of the protected “financial planner” (FP) title. The fee was comparable to a certification renewal with the CIFP. No new course work or assessment was required.
Keith Costello, president and CEO of the CIFP in Burlington, Ont., said the CIFP decided to make the offer after receiving inquiries about equivalency from other credential holders.
“The [education] standard for financial planning is now set by FSRA,” he said. “We agree with FSRA” on the standard, and so “have no problem giving an equivalency, albeit the other conditions are met.” For example, a candidate must have no regulatory claims against them.
The offer raised concerns.
“How are you allowed to certify [someone] for public-benefit purposes and regulatory purposes if, fundamentally, you haven’t administered anything to them?” said Michael Thom, managing director of CFA Societies Canada in Toronto. “Paying a fee is not earning a credential.”
Jeffrey Cait, an independent life insurance consultant and educator in Mississauga, Ont., who has two of the six FSRA-approved credentials for FP title use — the chartered life underwriter (CLU) and certified financial planner (CFP) designations — was a potential candidate for the CIFP’s offer. “When a designation can be obtained without learning anything new, that doesn’t add to consumer protection; it adds to consumer confusion,” Cait said in an interview.
Minimum standards versus equivalency
All credentials approved by FSRA meet minimum education standards established under the title protection framework. The framework also ensures credential holders are supervised by a FSRA-approved credentialing body and are subject to complaints and disciplinary processes.
During the credential application process with FSRA, “we have always been open” that if other financial-planning credential holders want “an equivalency” from the CIFP, “they qualify,” Costello said.
While the approved credentials each meet FSRA’s standards, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the credentials are equivalent.
Lilian Kim, a FSRA spokesperson, said in an emailed statement on Feb. 26 that the regulator was aware of the offer and was reviewing it.
Thom warned of regulatory arbitrage if equivalency offers are allowed. “If you’re just going to undercut everyone else’s economics, [title protection] becomes this race to the bottom,” he said. “The least demanding, least expensive professional body that’s still recognized by FSRA will … accrue the greatest market share.” If that’s the case, “what’s the public-interest benefit in having the regulatory framework?”
Many financial planners hold multiple credentials, Costello said, and the CIFP’s offer didn’t require or suggest that candidates drop their existing credentials. Planners may want a certain designation because of “a value proposition [or] accessibility proposition,” or they may prefer a certain designation’s name, he said.
FSRA’s approval of the chartered financial planner credential a couple of years ago generated controversy, with criticism arising that consumers could confuse the credential with the CFP designation, which is subject to global financial-planning standards.
The CIFP has since ended its equivalency offer — for now. “We are not continuing the offer (at this time),” Costello said in a subsequent emailed statement on March 3. “This is to maintain consistency in awarding credentials within the title protection framework.”
No other credentialing body offers its credential on a full equivalency basis.
When Investment Executive contacted FSRA a second time, Kim said in an email on March 4 that FSRA doesn’t comment publicly on individual complaints or supervisory matters that “may” be under review.
Costello said he had no further comment.
That leaves the potential for future equivalency offers unclear, if not wide open.
Thom said the equivalency offer shouldn’t have been allowed to occur. “There should be enough fair warning that if you attempt to do things like this, you will face serious consequences, and your viability as an approved credential provider will be put into jeopardy,” he said.
In one instance, financial-planning designations were treated, in effect, as equivalent. When FP Canada launched in the mid-’90s, the chartered financial planner and other designations were grandfathered into the CFP as a way to build FP Canada’s membership.
Given that history, “it’s a bit much to pile on” and criticize the CIFP’s equivalency offer, said Jason Watt, a financial services coach and consultant in Edmonton. At the same time, “the world has changed a lot” in the past three decades, he said, with a greater focus on clients’ best interests and outcomes. “Pretending like that’s not true is a problem.”
A push for standardized proficiency
Watt said the regulators “could be doing more work with the tools that were passed to them in legislation” for title protection. Specifically, “We know what effective education is; there’s a whole body of academic research around this,” he said. “We know what effective disciplinary committees look like; there’s a whole body of legal research around this.”
FAIR Canada, an investor rights advocacy organization, has said that title protection’s focus on meeting minimum standards sets the bar too low. “Consumers need an approach that focuses on the quality and reliability of the advice they receive,” FAIR said in its 2024 submission to New Brunswick’s title protection consultation. (The province’s rules, in effect at the beginning of 2026, mostly harmonize with Ontario, with some enhanced criteria for credentials.)
Further, “The framework focuses on and prioritizes the wrong thing, namely providing multiple pathways so those wishing to hold themselves out as financial planners or advisors to the public can do so without too much burden,” FAIR’s submission said. “Accordingly, they must only satisfy one of multiple diverse ‘minimum standards.’”
The consumer advocacy group also noted potential gaps in consumer protection, given “a tremendous range in the observable practice, ability and expertise each [credentialing body] brings to bear in setting conduct expectations for its members, policing them or taking enforcement action to protect the public.”
A standard competency framework as well as oversight are “the two things that make distinguished professions,” said Cary List, past president and CEO of FP Canada in Toronto. But “there’s no standard competency framework for what it means to be a financial planner under that legislation; there’s no model for FSRA to actually assess whether the credentialing body is holding people to account.”
“In what reasonable piece of legislation does professional credentialing not require a standardized minimum threshold?” said Jason Pereira, a partner with Woodgate Financial Inc. in Mississauga, Ont. “The determination of what constitutes sufficient levels of knowledge [has been outsourced] to companies that are for-profit,” he said. That “is in no way in service of the public interest.”
The regulator can choose how it interprets the title protection legislation, List said: “You can take the easy way out and just accredit everybody, or you can say, ‘No, you have to meet the spirit of what was intended by the legislation.’”
Title protection will evolve
Tony Mahabir, CEO of CANFIN Wealth Management in Toronto, is a member of the CIFP’s board (and past chair), a recipient of the FP Canada Fellow Distinction and a finance professor. Speaking to Investment Executive as a financial planner, he said regulation is an ongoing process, and he expects title protection will evolve. Regulation “takes time,” he said. “Most things have phases,” so stakeholders can adjust.
He’s optimistic that the credentialing bodies will eventually collaborate — as post-secondary institutions do, he said — on improved educational outcomes.
Mahabir also said that different credentialing bodies with different business models and credentials provide choice, which helps diverse candidates enter the profession, and helps firms and planners — especially independent ones — manage costs.
FSRA has stated publicly that multiple credentials provide consumers with choice when seeking help from financial professionals.
List dismissed appeals to choice. “Putting choice in the hands of the consumer to have to figure out what credential they should be looking for is ludicrous,” he said. “Governments have never figured that out.”
“There’s still opportunity for FSRA to say or do something,” Watt said.
In FSRA’s 2024–27 business plan, the regulator had committed to publishing a report evaluating title protection and exploring “possible future enhancements.” That report wasn’t produced. The regulator has relatively new personnel in key positions, including Antoinette Leung, who replaced Huston Loke last year as executive vice-president of market conduct.
Meanwhile, Cait said he’s dropping credentials — but not the ones that help clients understand what he does. “I keep my MBA Finance, because I’m on the product side, and then I added the TEP [trust and estate practitioner] because I do estate planning,” he said.
Pereira is among those pushing for title protection changes, but List said the will for change may not exist where it matters. Government and regulators may be “talking about raising standards, but they’re not talking about a profession” for financial planning and advice, he said.
If they were, there wouldn’t be a multiple-credential title protection regime — years in the making — in place.
“There is no profession in Canada that has multiple credentials,” List said. “Why is financial services different?”