For several years during the 1990s, the financial services industry in the Philippines was looking for a dynamic change. New players coming to the industry both from foreign and local opening up new insurance companies, stockbrokerage and mutual fund agencies have expanded the number of agents and financial service professionals.
The increase in the level of competition has resulted to new marketing strategies which shifted the focus from mass based marketing approach to personalized based customer approach. Several industry players such as banks and insurance companies have formed business alliances to cross sell each other’s products and services in other to add value to the financial consumer.
The need to educate the financial services professional community on complementary products ands services that they need to sell has created demand for a more specialized training towards financial planning. While many insurance and investment companies added technical modules in their training program for agents, the focus was still biased to selling products.
Many financial service companies have used the theme of financial planning in their marketing programs in the early 2000s. At one point, many insurance sales agents were known as either financial consultant or financial planner. It was during this time when a group of financial service professionals from insurance, mutual fund, stock market, private investment and banking have agreed to establish an institute that will promote the profession of a financial planner who is independent, ethical and competent that is different from the so-called financial planners in the market who are simply selling financial products. Hence, Registered Financial Planner (RFP) Philippines was born in 2005.
RFP Philippines was officially introduced to the public through the first ever Financial Planning Expo that it organized in 2006 which was attended by more than 15,000 people from all over the country. Ordinary people from all walks of life have been exposed to series of free seminars on personal finance that have never been done before. RFP Philippines also organized a forum for the financial services community which was attended by about 300 professionals from different industries.
RFP Philippines promotes its professional certification program in financial planning which leads to awarding of the Registered Financial Planner or RFP designation to the successful candidate who meets the membership requirements.