EFP study guide
EFP · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Exam of Financial Planning (EFP) is a professional certification exam for people who want to demonstrate competence across the full breadth of personal financial planning. Candidates typically include practicing advisors, bank and insurance staff moving into advisory roles, and career changers who already hold a finance, accounting, or legal background. The EFP study guide has 8 sections and about 3,338 words.
01Financial Planning Fundamentals and Professional Ethics
This domain tests the planning process and the professional standards that make advice defensible: engagement scope, data gathering, analysis, recommendations, implementation, monitoring, fiduciary duty, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, competence, and documentation. Scenario items often ask what the planner must do first, what must be disclosed, and whether a recommendation meets a suitability standard or a fiduciary standard.
444 words, about 2 min02Cash Flow, Budgeting, and Debt Management
This domain tests whether you can build and interpret a personal cash-flow statement and net worth statement, set a budget, measure debt burden, size an emergency fund, and prioritize debt repayment. Questions often turn on the difference between gross and net income, which expenses are essential, and whether consolidation or refinancing actually helps.
468 words, about 2 min03Insurance and Risk Management
This domain tests risk identification and treatment, the principles that make a risk insurable, policy analysis, and needs-based sizing of life, disability, health, property, and liability coverage. Expect questions on exclusions, deductibles, coinsurance, insurable interest, and the difference between the human-life-value and needs approaches.
428 words, about 2 min04Investment Planning and Asset Allocation
This domain tests investment policy statements, asset allocation, risk and return measurement, diversification, correlation, rebalancing, costs, taxes, and behavioral biases. Questions often ask what allocation suits a time horizon or risk capacity, why a portfolio's risk is not the weighted average of its holdings, and how fees and taxes erode returns.
390 words, about 2 min05Retirement Planning and Pension Systems
This domain tests retirement needs analysis, accumulation and withdrawal math, pension plan types, social insurance, annuities, inflation, longevity, sequence-of-returns risk, and retirement tax issues. Questions often ask whether a client is on track, how much to save, and how pension or annuity income changes the gap.
434 words, about 2 min06Tax Planning
This domain tests marginal versus average tax rates, deductions versus credits, capital gains, tax-advantaged accounts, timing, income splitting, and the line between avoidance and evasion. Questions often ask which action saves more tax, when to defer income, and how account location affects after-tax wealth.
403 words, about 2 min07Estate Planning and Wealth Transfer
This domain tests wills, intestacy, probate, trusts, beneficiary designations, titling, gifts, powers of attorney, health-care directives, estate and gift taxes, and incapacity planning. Questions often ask how an asset passes, what a will cannot control, and how to reduce probate or estate tax.
376 words, about 2 min08Comprehensive Financial Plan Integration and Client Communication
This domain tests plan integration across cash flow, risk, investments, retirement, tax, and estate, plus goal prioritization, implementation, monitoring, client communication, and behavioral finance. Questions often present competing goals and ask what to do first, how to explain a trade-off, and how to document the engagement.
395 words, about 2 min