Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor℠ (CRPC®)
Awarded by the College for Financial Planning®, a Kaplan company
The CRPC® is a designation focused entirely on retirement. It trains advisors to map out a client's path to retirement and then through it: how to invest for it, where retirement income will come from, how to handle taxes, estate goals, and health care, and how to manage the emotional side of leaving work.
For me, it put structure around what I'd been doing on the phones and in workshops for years: helping people turn a retirement plan statement into real decisions.
What the course covers
- Maximizing the Client Experience During the Retirement Planning Process
- Principles and Strategies When Investing for Retirement
- Understanding Social Security, Military and Government Retirement Benefits
- Bridging the Income Gap: Identifying Other Sources of Retirement Income
- Navigating Health Care Options in Retirement
- Making the Emotional and Financial Transition to Retirement
- Designing Optimal Retirement Income Streams
- Achieving Tax and Estate Planning Objectives in Retirement
- Fiduciary, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues for Advisers
The course ends with a final exam, and designees receive credit for one course in the College's M.S. in Personal Financial Planning program.
Source: Kaplan Financial Education, "CRPC® Designation"
Also earned: RPF I & II
Retirement Plan Fundamentals is ASPPA's program on how employer retirement plans actually run behind the scenes. I earned it early in my career at Security Benefit, and it's the foundation for how I explain plans to participants today.
- What makes a plan "qualified," and the main plan types
- Eligibility, enrollment, and contribution types
- Distributions, rollovers, hardships, and RMDs
- Participant loans: limits, repayment, and default
- Compliance testing (ADP/ACP, top-heavy) and ERISA reporting