The Canadian Association of Financial Planners voted to defer a decision on whether to retire the registered financial planner designation at last night’s annual general meeting.

After a daylong meeting between the board of regents and board of directors, and amid fears that delegates would vote not to abolish the RFP designation, a motion was brought forth to delay the decision for a year.

An exuberantly unanimous decision “allows us to try and find a solution and this buys us some more time,” said Lynn Triffon, director of communications for the CAFP, following the vote.

The Financial Planners Standards Council had set July 1 as a deadline for the CAFP to resolve whether the association still wanted to grant the RFP designation. If CAFP had decided to keep the RFP, it could no longer be a member of the FPSC.

Last October the FPSC passed a motion that restricts board membership to organizations that do not promote a financial planning designation other than the certified financial planner.

The CAFP isn’t so hung-up on the letters “RFP”, but it highly values the standards that the designation has put in place and brings to the financial advice business.

Triffon says the CAFP is willing to give up the designation if the two organizations could compromise and come up with a name that recognizes that a person understands the CAFP’s standards. Triffon hypothesizes renaming it a “fellow of the CAFP”.

Over the next year the CAFP will not grant its designation to anyone not already enrolled in the RFP program.

Although the motion to defer a decision pleased the board members, not everyone sees it as a good thing. “It’s not my idea of democracy,” said Jim Rogers, chairman of Canadian Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. The CAFP and CAIFA broke off merger talks last year due largely to disagreements about the future of the RFP.

“We will never share a common vision under the current governance. Electing to defer, rather than deal with it, it will be the same dilemma as a year from now.”