Jeff Camarda Earns PHD in Financial & Retirement Planning

At long last, Jeff is proud to announce that he has successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, and should have official word of being awarded his PhD degree in financial and retirement planning by the time you read this. His oldest son, Dylan, accompanied him to Philadelphia, and watched as Jeff presented, and then defended his PhD thesis and dissertation, in a lecture hall attended by many of The American College of Financial Service’s professors, with many more observing online. While dozens of students have been admitted to this program since 2013, Jeff is one of the first two who – within a day of each other – have earned doctor status. Jeff’s research broke new ground on advisor ethics and malpractice, and found that FINRA advisors in Florida who had at least one of CFP®, ChFC®, or CFA® designations exhibited lower rates of malpractice, but that those with conflicts of interests such as being licensed as both stockbrokers and fiduciary investment advisors, or having commission insurance licenses, showed much higher rates of malpractice. The big surprise was that male advisors had far worse malpractice records than females– and this was the biggest single factor. Jeff next plans to expand the research nationally, and to study if there are differences between the designations, as was hinted at in his study. For instance, malpractice seemed to go down a lot for CFA®s, but not much at all for CFP®s. He is also conducting research on what he calls “senior financial literacy,” which helps clients avoid wealth dangers which become more worrisome later in life. This research also breaks new ground. Read Jeff’s recent article at Financial-Planning.com: “Do professional designations matter?”