Top 7 Financial Advisor Designations
“Mistakes are the best teachers. One does not learn from success. It is desirable to learn vicariously from other people’s failures, but it gets much more firmly seared in when they are your own.” – Mohnish Pabrai
This is the third post in a series of 3 about the financial advisor profession, financial advisor designations, and titles of financial advisors. The past two: Who is your financial advisor? and Top 8 titles used by financial advisors, discuss the different titles by which a financial advisor might be called. This post will detail 7 different financial advisor designations which require additional training and certification to use them. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are over 208 financial advisor designations^1. However many of them are relatively unknown to the majority of the financial advisor community and the investing public. Also a number of them are for specializations which many not apply for most of the advisor’s day-to-day activities.
I have chosen 7 designations: Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Financial Analyst, Chartered Financial Consultant, Certified Fund Specialist, Certified Investment Management Analyst, Chartered Market Technician, and Certified Public Accountant for this post. A number of these designation are common and well-known designations, but generally are not used by the financial advisory profession. Get to know these designations. If you meet someone with one of these designation, don’t be afraid to ask what they mean.