Many of my acquaintances and curious potential clients are attorneys and other smart people who want to know about my licensing to work with clients in different states or on specific types of finance-related issues.
I love your questions and consumer savvy! I’m going to address these licensing-type questions here to save time for both you and me.
tl;dr
- I am qualified and allowed to provide financial planning services anywhere.
- I am actively licensed to practice law in Virginia and the District of Columbia. Bar admission is not required for most of what I do for clients, though.
- I previously qualified to sell and advise on securities but do not currently maintain these licenses. If you want personalized advice about securities, I can help you explore other options for obtaining that.
- I am licensed to broker life and long-term care insurance and annuities only in Virginia currently, but insurance sales are not my priority.
CFP® Professional Certification and Enforcement
My primary professional service is financial planning, and my competence and ethical requirements for financial planning are certified by the CFP Board. The CFP Board is a self-regulatory non-profit organization that elevates the profession of financial planning by setting and enforcing requirements for using the Certified Financial Planner™ designation.
Before someone can become a Certified Financial Planner™, they must complete a substantial educational element, have at least three years of supervised experience working in the field, and pass a challenging several-hour comprehensive exam. After being certified, they must continuously adhere to the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. Clients who believe their CFP® professional has violated this code in any way can file a complaint with the CFP Board. If there is substantial evidence of misconduct, a CFP® professional may be publicly censured, and have their CFP® certification suspended or revoked.
The CFP Board standards are international, so I can provide Financial Planning and Financial Advice under the CFP® standards to clients anywhere. Many principles of financial planning are universal, but the CFP® exam and continuing education are focused on U.S. tax and property laws. If you have questions that invoke tax or legal rules in areas where I lack prior knowledge and experience, I will tell you, and let you decide if you want me to research the issue or whether you would prefer to consult a different professional on that issue.
Legal Advice – By Specific, Written Engagement Only
Though I have a law degree, I generally will not be providing my clients with legal advice. You cannot use reliance on my financial advice to absolve you of responsibility in tax controversies or other legally contested situations.
Estate planning is a common subject that I address with my clients. In many cases, I will be doing this as a planner, not as a lawyer. As a planner, I can help you figure out what you want your estate planning documents to do, and can help you review and understand drafts produced by your legal counsel. I can also assist with implementing your estate plan by helping you follow through on retitling assets and changing beneficiary designations after your estate planning documents are executed. What a financial planning engagement won’t include is drafting the legal documents for you, or representing you in probate court etc.
If you want me to draft your estate planning documents instead of hiring another attorney to do this work, there are two options:
- Most of the legal services that I provide are done as a part-time employee of the law firm of Hughes & Leighton PLLC in Alexandria, Virginia, under the supervision of award-winning estate planning attorneys with decades of experience serving clients in Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland. The hourly rates charged for services engaged through Hughes & Leighton depend on the particular professionals doing the work, ranging from paralegals to partners. An engagement agreement between you and the law firm will be required, designating me as your primary but not exclusive point of contact.
- If for some reason you do not want to engage with the law firm, you can engage me directly. (For example, if I am primarily providing you with financial planning but incidental to that we discover you need to make minor changes to your last will & testament.) I will require a signed written client engagement agreement for the legal services I will be providing. This will include acknowledgment that you understand that I do NOT carry legal malpractice insurance on my own, and that you have made the informed decision to engage me without law firm supervision anyway.
Securities/Investment Advice – Not Currently Licensed
Under state and federal laws, selling securities, or charging a fee to provide advice about securities, must be done as a representative of a registered financial institution. It is not permissible to provide this kind of advice as a truly solo practitioner.
Before a person can become registered with a financial institution, they have to pass FINRA licensing exams appropriate for the types of products or services they will be providing. Early in my career transition to financial advising I was affiliated with Northwestern Mutual Investment Services and passed the Series 6 (for mutual funds and variable insurance products), Series 63 (state laws regarding sale of securities), and Series 65 (investment adviser representative) exams. I could not actively maintain these registrations when I transitioned to positions where I wasn’t selling or advising on securities.
I do not presently have plans to affiliate with a financial institution and reactivate these licenses, so I will not give specific advice about investing in securities. I can provide financial education about asset classes, modern portfolio theory, different types of investment accounts, etc.
Most securities-licensed professionals have six-figure or even seven-figure minimum account sizes for providing personalized investment advice, because following the regulations in this space consumes a lot of time for each new client or account. If you have sufficient investable assets and want personalized investment advice, I am happy to help you find a trustworthy advisor.
Regardless of how much you have in investable assets, we can discuss options for using robo-advisory services or self-managed accounts to minimize the expenses taken out of your investment portfolio.
Brokering Life Insurance and Annuities – Currently Only Virginia
Also during my early experience working with Northwestern Mutual, I took the licensing exams to qualify as an agent or broker for life and long-term care insurance and annuities. Unlike securities, insurance licenses do not require institutional affiliation to maintain. Instead, insurance licenses require substantial continuing education and a modest renewal fee every year or two. I have maintained my insurance license only in Virginia.
Reciprocity requirements and costs for insurance licenses in other states are much more modest than they are for bar admissions, so I may consider insurance licensing in select additional states if there is client demand for it. But I don’t want insurance to be the focus of my advisory practice, so expanding my insurance licensing is not a priority at this time.
Curious Financial Counsel 
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