The CFP Board is establishing a new commission that will be authorized to adjudicate CFP members’ appeals hearings, the organization announced this week. The finalized commission comes after the board released the proposed changes for public comment in November of last year.
Previously, such hearings were adjudicated by the Board’s Code and Standards Enforcement Committee (CSEC). According to the board’s updated rules, while specific procedures of adjudicating reviews are not set to change, the decisions will now be made by the newly established five-member commission, which will include individuals not currently serving on the CFP Board’s Board of Directors.
In a recent interview with WealthManagement.com, new CFP Board Chair Kamila Elliott stressed that the changes were not an indication that the board was lessening its oversight of the process, while CEO Kevin Keller said the changes would help keep the appeals process both credible for the public and fair for CFP members.
“It also allows CFP Board’s Board of Directors who currently sit on the CSEC to remain focused on CFP Board’s organizational strategy, policymaking and monitoring of our enforcement processes—not on adjudicating appeals,” he said.
The commission’s chair will be Denise Voigt Crawford, a former member of the CFP Board’s Board of Directors. Crawford previously served as the head of an independent task force created in the wake of reporting from the The Wall Street Journal alleging that the CFP Board had failed to adequately vet thousands of CFP professionals’ regulatory, disciplinary and criminal history and failed to include that information on a site searchable by potential clients.
The task force eventually released a final report in December 2019, arguing there were failures in the board’s enforcement program, but said the primary cause of the issues was “systemic, longstanding, governance-level weaknesses” at the board level. The board outlined its own plan for governance reforms the following October.
Crawford was also the Texas securities commissioner for 17 years and served twice as president of the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA). Other members of the commission include Susan MacMichael John, a former chair of the CFP Board’s Board of Directors and Shelly-Ann Eweka, the current Chair of the Board’s Sanctions and Fitness Commission. They’re joined by Jeffrey Weekes, another member of the Sanctions and Fitness Commission, as well as Gary Strickland, a member of the Board’s Disciplinary and Ethics Commission.
Crawford and John will serve through the end of 2023, while Eweka and Weekes’ terms conclude at the close of 2024; Strickland’s term ends one year later, in December 2025. The five new commission members will begin serving on Feb. 1 and the updated procedural rules take effect on Feb. 22.
