.:: Welcome to the Official Magazine of the SAIFM::.

he Financial Planning Institute is regarded as the leading independent professional body for financial planners in South Africa that ensures South Africans have access to, and value, competent financial planning.

Professionalism in financial planning rests on competence and ethics. As the custodian of the profession, the FPI is uncompromising in establishing and maintaining world class professional financial planning standards, ensuring that members remain competent and ethical to retain their professional status. Many top financial institutions regard the FPI as an independent standards partner and members include both general practitioners and specialists in particular sectors of financial planning.

The FPI was originally formed in 1981 as the Institute of Life and Pension Advisors (ILPA) to improve levels of professionalism amongst financial planners and advisors. To ensure that financial planners in South Africa met international standards, in 1998, the Financial Planning Institute affiliated with the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Board of Standards in the United States and in April 2000 adopted its new name to more accurately reflect its role as the custodian of competency and ethical standards.

The FPI is recognised internationally and is a founding affiliate member of the international Financial Planning Standards Board Ltd (FPSB), along with 23 other affiliate member countries.

To be the recognised and respected Professional Body for the Financial Planning profession in Southern Africa.

The main object and business of the FPI is to advance and promote the profession of financial planning, to raise the status of professional financial planners, and to protect the public they serve through the following activities:

The Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa (FPI), as a professional body has as its main objective, the promotion or furtherance of competence, skills, education and professional excellence in the financial planning industry.

Serving both the financial services industry and its clients, FPI provides an independent quality assurance process, ensuring that appropriate professional standards are maintained for financial advisers and planners, while ensuring that ethical and practice standards keep pace with the needs of the South African market.

This supports the ideals of the government's financial industry regulator, the Financial Services Board (FSB), in ensuring the South African consumer is served professionally by competent and ethical advisers.

The FPI certifies professional financial planners at three levels : CFP® professional, AFP™ professional and RFP™ professional, with certification based on the following “4E” criteria:

CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and are trademarks owned outside the U.S. by Financial Planning Standards Board Ltd. The Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa is the marks licensing authority for the CFP Marks in South Africa through agreement with FPSB.

The FPI is supported by three pillars: Certification, Technical Services and Marketing and Business Development:

In Certification, we strive to protect our trademarks and continue to focus on international standard setting for certification as well as benchmarking the certification process in terms of the 4 E’s (Education, Examination, Ethics and Experience) as well as ongoing certification requirements including Continued Professional Development.
The focus of Technical Services is to represent the FPI as the legitimate and authoritative voice of the financial planning profession on all issues affecting financial planning professionals as well as to ensure the effective delivery of technical information to our members in order to keep them abreast of changes affecting the financial planning industry.
In Marketing and Business Development, we aim to ensure that the demand and number of professionals grows as well the implementation of a world class value proposition to retain professional members, grow non-certificant revenue, develop and nurture strategic alliances, develop and execute marketing and branding initiatives and identify new business opportunities.

The FPI On 29 June 2009 the Financial Services Board, under Section 6(4) of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, No 37 of 2002, recognised the Financial Planning Institute (FPI) as a representative body for the purposes of performing the functions determined by the Registrar of Financial Services Providers. In terms of the above recognition, the Registrar of Financial Services Providers delegated, in terms of section 6(3)(a)(iii) of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, No 37 of 2002 (“the Act”), the function to develop and deliver the examinations stipulated below to the FPI.