CFP BOARD TO PHASE OUT PAPER TESTING
Washington, D.C. -- The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. is planning to move to computer-based testing for its CFP Certification Examination, starting in November. The final paper-based exams will be administered March 21-22 and July 18-19.
The computerized exam will take place in a single day, as opposed to the current testing period of 10 hours over a day-and-a-half time period. With CBT, the exam will be administered in one day with six hours of testing time.
Exam-takers will be able to schedule their exams online, so they will have more flexibility in choosing their test date and testing site within the five-day window during which the exam will be offered. The computerized exam will maintain the same content detailed in CFP Board's exam blueprint.
CSR SWAYS INVESTORS
Washington, D.C. -- According to a study by a group of accounting professors, some investors are affected by a company's corporate social responsibility efforts, and take into account a company's CSR record when picking stocks. The study, which appears in a recent issue of the American Accounting Association journal The Accounting Review, found "an unintended causal relationship" between CSR performance and investors' estimates of fundamental value. When companies have a strong CSR record, investors who focus almost exclusively on financials estimate a company's fundamental value to be about 25 percent higher than those who divide their thinking more equally between financials and CSR. When a firm has a poor CSR record, the former group's estimate is about 9 percent lower.
