The IAFP® Once Again Takes on a Goliath
Press Release: November 26, 2010
The Institute of Advanced Financial Planners™ (IAFP®) is expressing serious concerns about the CLU Institute’s new name, “The Institute for Advanced Financial Education”, or as their website states, simply “The Institute”.
The IAFP®(iafp.ca) has made its objections known, but to no avail. The CLUs responded that they had no intention of causing confusion in the marketplace and had taken pains to avoid referring to themselves as the “IAFE”. However, their new website address is www.iafe.ca, and an article earlier this month announcing their launch referred to “IAFE” 15 times.
IAFP® Executive Director Larry Colero says, “There will be confusion. Both of our organizations have overlapping membership targeting the same market. Both Institutes grant professional designations and provide education for Canadian financial planners.”
The IAFP® is a member-driven, not-for-profit organization established in 2002 to administer the Registered Financial Planner (R.F.P.®) designation formerly administered by the Canadian Association of Financial Planners since 1987. Its mandate is to promote professionalism in financial planning and provide an added level of assurance to the public. Like the IAFP®, the CLU Institute also administers designations, namely the CLU and RHU designations, for financial advisors – some of whom may also be financial planners.
Colero continues, “The IAFP®’s R.F.P.®designation represents a much more complete standard for financial planning and more stringent qualification requirements, so you could say it’s more advanced. If they continue to infringe the IAFP®’s trademark and position the CLU/RHU as more advanced than other designations, people will mistakenly believe that they represent the highest standard for financial planning. Not only will the IAFP® suffer from this confusion, so will the Canadian public and the entire profession.”
The IAFP® is no stranger to protecting and enforcing its trademark rights. In 2008, they take credit for playing a key role in preventing the official Canadian launch of the International Association of Registered Financial Consultants, Inc. when the IAFP® contended confusion would arise between the R.F.P.® and RFC designations. In 2005, the IAFP® took on the Ohio-based RFPI (Registered Financial Planners Institute) over unauthorized use of the R.F.P.® trademark in Canada, and succeeded in causing the RFPI’s Canadian R.F.P.®s to stop using the designation.
References:
CLU Institute unveils new name, logo and website, CLU Institute Press Release, Oct. 13, 2010
(Also see R.F.P.® Letters to the CLU Institute and Advocis)
Last updated: 21 Jul 2019 11:56 PM
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