Better Together: Professional Partnerships Across the CFP® Knowledge Base

Comprehensive financial planning carries a promise - to address a client's full financial picture, not just the domains that feel comfortable, familiar, or fee-friendly. Yet in practice, many CFP® professionals leave critical planning areas  - estate planning, tax strategy, life insurance, long-term care, and special needs planning - underserved, often without a structured process for bringing in qualified specialists. This session confronts that gap directly, examining what the CFP Board's Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct requires when a planner cannot or does not serve the whole client on their own.

At the heart of the discussion is Section A.13 of the CFP Board Code, which governs the obligations advisors hold when engaging professional partners on behalf of clients - including the duty to vet partner qualifications, disclose economic arrangements, maintain reasonable care beyond the referral, and document scope of responsibility across multi-party engagements. Through a structured panel format, five practitioners spanning the CFP® knowledge domains will each share where the profession most commonly under-delivers in their specialty and present a specific, actionable resource or partnership model that Fee-Only RIAs can implement.

This session is timely because Fee-Only advisors face mounting pressure to demonstrate true comprehensiveness - not just investment management - while navigating growing scrutiny around referral arrangements, compensation transparency, and multi-party accountability. The CFP Board's A.13 framework is not aspirational guidance; it is an enforceable standard, and advisors who lack structured partner relationships may be unknowingly out of compliance. Attendees will leave with a working understanding of their ethical obligations under A.13, a clearer picture of where planning gaps most often harm clients, and concrete partnership models they can evaluate and act on immediately.

Learning Objectives:
1. Evaluate their current client engagements against the five obligations outlined in CFP Board Code & Standards Section A.13 - including reasonable basis for partner vetting, economic benefit disclosure, reasonable care post-referral, scope documentation, and duty to notify - and identify specific gaps in their existing professional partnership practices.
2. Distinguish between the planning domains they are personally equipped to serve and those requiring a qualified specialist, and apply a structured framework for engaging, disclosing, and maintaining accountability over commission-compensated or third-party partners in a manner that satisfies CFP Board ethical standards without compromising the Fee-Only value proposition.
3. Implement at least one domain-specific partnership model - including life insurance analytics benchmarking, structured advisor-attorney collaboration, insurance and longevity sub-advisory arrangements, outsourced tax and accounting services, or special needs planning coordination - to expand the comprehensiveness of their client service offering while remaining compliant with A.13 disclosure and oversight requirements.