CRPS

It is a professional certification in the retirement plans field, offered by the College for Financial Planning®, a Kaplan Company, and listed alongside designations such as the CRPC®, AAMS®, and APMA®. It signals specialized knowledge of employer-sponsored plan design, installation, administration, and fiduciary and compliance responsibilities.

Professionals whose work involves employer-sponsored retirement plans: advisors who consult on plan selection, staff who install or service plans, and anyone with fiduciary or compliance duties. If your client work is mostly individual retirement income planning, the CRPC® is the sibling designation the source lists for that audience instead.

The program is organized around four areas: retirement plan design and selection; plan implementation and installation; plan administration and operation; and fiduciary, compliance, and client-advisory issues. Expect coverage testing, contribution and benefit limits, distributions, plan documents, and fiduciary process to appear across those areas rather than in isolation.

Those details are not published in the material this page is based on, so we do not state a number. Exam length and item counts change between revisions. Confirm the current format directly with the College for Financial Planning before you schedule, and budget your practice sessions to the format they quote you.

Fee and retake terms are not disclosed in our source, so we do not estimate them. Pricing for designation programs typically bundles course materials, so ask whether your enrollment includes one exam attempt or more. Get the answer in writing before you pay, since bundle terms drive your real cost per attempt.

We cannot cite a pass rate, and difficulty depends on your background. Candidates who already work with qualified plans find the administration material familiar; those coming from individual planning often struggle with coverage and nondiscrimination testing. Budget more time for the testing math and less for concepts you apply daily.

Start with plan design and selection so you understand plan types and eligibility rules, then move to implementation and installation, which builds on that foundation. Administration and operation follows naturally. Finish with fiduciary and compliance, because those questions are easier to reason through once you know how plans actually run.

No official figure is published, so set your own benchmark. Most working candidates need several weeks of consistent sessions rather than a single cram. Track practice-question accuracy by topic and keep studying any area below your target until it is stable across two or three sessions in a row.

Memorizing limits without understanding the rules behind them, skipping nondiscrimination and coverage testing because the math feels tedious, and ignoring fiduciary process questions as soft content. Another frequent problem is never practicing under time pressure, which turns known material into rushed, careless errors on exam day.

The College describes stackable programs: professional certifications can be applied toward CFP® certification education or a master's degree, and CFP® certification stacks into the MS in Personal Financial Planning. Confirm current transfer eligibility and any limits with the school before you assume your coursework will carry over.