·         Building a sense of Community among CPA financial planners

·         Enhancing Competency of CPAs who provide personal financial planning services

·         Improving Communications & Outreach Programs to members as well as external audiences

Looking forward, we remain steadfast in our pursuit of these goals! Learn more about AICPA PFP staff, products, and services.

Community

Having a strong sense of community has been such an important piece of the puzzle for our PFP section members and PFS credential holders. So many CPA financial planners have told us that they want a "home" or a place in which they can share, collaborate, and network with their peers, and with financial planners who have similar professional interests. They are looking for support and a foundation that will help them come together as a tightly knit community of financial planners. And not just any financial planner, but CPA financial planners.

We're working toward solidifying that foundational support by building on our prior accomplishments. The first phase of the process involved the enhancement of the PFP Web site that included new technical practice resources and vastly improved navigation pages from which users could visit the many areas of interest offered on the site.

This phase also included the launch of the CPA Financial Planner discussion forum as an online collaborative space for PFP section members and PFS credential holders. You witnessed our Continous Improvement Process in action as we undertook major initiatives to launch several new research topic areas and added thousands of technical articles. Following phases will involve more enhancements, including improved technology and more effective organization of technical and practice management content.

Many of you have already participated in our town hall meetings, whether over the telephone or face to face at an AICPA conference. They're excellent opportunities for CPA financial planners to come together and not only share their thoughts with the AICPA but also with each other.

The AICPA's overall financial literacy efforts are important initiatives for our community, in addition to being strong focal points for our communications and outreach programs. Our programs, such as "360 Degrees of Financial Literacy" and our newly expanded "Women's Financial Literacy Campaign," help to demonstrate to the public that our community—the CPA financial planner community—is a knowledgeable, trustworthy resource, and that we are here to help.

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Competency

The AICPA Personal Financial Planning team will also continue to focus on the areas of professional standards, ethics, and integrity for CPA financial planners. Without effective and meaningful standards of practice, a solid code of ethics, and a strong sense of integrity, we are at a disadvantage in the marketplace.

The PFP Executive Committee will continue to explore the responsibilities of a CPA financial planner. Efforts such as the review of the AICPA PFP Statements on Responsibility (SORs) that have become the de facto standards for our profession will help maintain the CPA Financial Planner on the cutting edge of today's competitive environment.

But the committee will also explore beyond this, looking at such things as: When is a CPA subject to the SORs? Do they cover CPAs who are giving investment advice that is incidental to their practice of accountancy? Do they cover CPAs who are not members of the PFP Membership Section?

The executive committee also plans to look at the fiduciary responsibilities of CPA financial planners: When is the CPA acting as a fiduciary? If the CPA is acting in a fiduciary capacity, should he or she be following the prudent investment processes detailed in our

Prudent Investment Practices: A Handbook for Investment Fiduciaries. The discussion around fiduciary responsibility will likely lead to robust debate on the issue of ethics and integrity for our profession—to what standard should CPA financial planners be held?

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Communications & Outreach Programs

You have witnessed an expansion of the communications and outreach programs by the AICPA to support our community. Some of these activities involve reaching out to strategic alliance partners to bring you important benefits such as our media outreach efforts through which the AICPA positions CPA financial planners as subject-matter experts on various financial planning topics in interviews with television, radio, and cable stations as well as newspapers and magazines. To those of you who have participated in these media interviews on such topics as disaster recovery, fiduciary responsibility, tax matters, and more, thank you for serving as an expert!

CPA financial planners like Meloni Hallock, Michael Eisenberg, Michael Velazquez, Jeanne Shannon, Marc Minker, Clark Blackman, Leonard Wright, Peter Lucier, Sheryl Rowling, Marie Ebersbacher, and Bruce Gray, to name a few, have recently been involved in our media outreach efforts—not only are the interviews great marketing tools for them to promote their firms' efforts, they also raise the awareness of CPA financial planners as experts in the field.

Other outreach activities involve bringing technical or practice management information to you and your clients or employers, such as the seminar series being held by the U.S. Department of Labor and co-sponsored by the AICPA. This series focuses on fiduciary responsibility of small business owners, trustees, and other types of benefit plan administrators. Since many in our community serve in fiduciary capacities or advise individuals who also happen to own small businesses, this is an excellent opportunity to increase your knowledge in an area of growing importance.

Other activities are designed to help our profession fulfill another important part of its mission: to protect the public interest. In this case, the AICPA has launched several prominent financial literacy programs for the American public, including "360 Degrees of Financial Literacy," which looks at financial matters affecting individuals at numerous stages throughout their lives.

These programs help raise the financial literacy of consumers and more closely tie CPAs to the issue as experts to whom consumers can turn for help. Not to mention that these programs also subtly raise the awareness of CPA financial planners in the public's mind. New developments and program enhancements keep CPA Financial Planners at the forefront in the area of financial literacy and the AICPA is committed to supporting you in this endeavor. For example, the AICPA's Women's Financial Health Week program that was held in previous years has now been expanded and launched as an ongoing program supporting Women's Financial Literacy. Yet another enhancement raising marketplace awareness and acceptance.

We will continue to bring new programs and enhancements to members of our PFP community, in hopes of growing your practices and serving your clients. New programs and benefits are in the works‑watch your inboxes and this Web site for more details as they develop.

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How to Find AICPA PFP Staff, Products and Services

PFP staff phone numbers are listed below. To find AICPA PFP Products and Services, visit Contact Us.