Do daily money managers need a license in Maryland?

No. Maryland's Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing regulates 25 professions through 21 boards, and daily money management is not among them. There is no state register to search, no state complaint process specific to the work, and no state authority that can suspend anyone from doing it.

A Certified Daily Money Manager, a voluntary credential from the American Association of Daily Money Managers, formerly called the PDMM. It requires an exam, an ethics commitment, at least 1,500 hours of paid daily money management work in the previous three years, and continuing education to maintain. It is a professional certification, not a government license, and it confers no authority.

Does a power of attorney have to be bonded in Maryland?

No. A court-appointed guardian of the property must post a surety bond with the circuit court and file annual reports proving it remains in force. An agent under a power of attorney has fiduciary duties, including a duty to keep records of all receipts and disbursements, but posts no bond, completes no training and files nothing with any court.

What is the difference between a fidelity bond and liability insurance?

General liability covers accidents and injury. A fidelity bond, also called an employee dishonesty bond, covers theft by an employee. A firm can hold one and not the other, so ask which is in force, for what amount, and ask for the certificate from the insurer rather than a copy forwarded by the firm.

Is a family member a safer choice than a professional?

Not automatically. A family member is unlicensed, unbonded and unsupervised in exactly the same way, and is often under more financial pressure than a professional would be. The safeguards that matter are structural rather than personal: split the roles, send duplicate statements to a second person, use view-only access where possible, and set account alerts. Apply them regardless of who helps.

Guide

Nobody licenses the person who pays your parents' bills

We could not add this to the directory, because there is nothing to check it against. That is worth explaining rather than quietly leaving out.

Twenty-five professions, and this is not one of them

Maryland's Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing oversees 21 boards and commissions regulating more than 255,000 individuals and businesses across 25 professions. Home improvement contractors, real estate agents, electricians, plumbers, HVACR technicians, home inspectors, land surveyors, foresters, barbers, cosmetologists, household goods movers, pawnbrokers, athlete agents, locksmiths and individual tax preparers are all on the list.

Maryland licenses the person who can open your front door. It does not license the person who can open your mother's bank account. It licenses the person who fills in her tax return once a year. It does not license the person who holds her checkbook every week.

The same is true one step sideways. Home care agencies are licensed by the Maryland Office of Health Care Quality, so the aide who helps her bathe is working under a state license. The person who moves her money is not.

Three levels of oversight, and the one families use most has the least

A court-appointed guardian of the property is watched closely. Maryland requires court appointment before any authority begins. The guardian posts a surety bond with the circuit court in an amount the judge sets. Since 1 January 2018 newly appointed guardians must complete the Maryland Courts Guardian Training Program and file a Certificate of Completion. They then file an initial report and an annual fiduciary report to the court, with documentation each year that the bond is still in force.

An agent under a power of attorney carries real duties and almost no supervision. Under Maryland's Estates and Trusts Article the agent must act in the principal's best interest, act loyally, avoid conflicts of interest, exercise care and competence, and keep a record of all receipts, disbursements and transactions made on the principal's behalf. That record-keeping duty is genuine. But there is no court appointment, no bond, no training requirement and nothing filed with anyone. The records surface only if the principal asks for them or a court orders it. If the principal has dementia, nobody asks.

A daily money manager working without either role has nothing at all. No license, no bond that anyone requires, no register, no filing, no state authority to complain to. Just access.

The order is exactly backwards from how families use them. Guardianship is rare and heavily supervised. Informal help with the bills is common and supervised by nobody.

The number everyone quotes is about strangers

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received 201,266 complaints from people aged 60 and over in 2025, reporting $7.75 billion in losses, up 59 percent on the previous year. The average reported loss was $38,500, and more than 12,400 older complainants each lost over $100,000.

Read what is inside that figure. Investment fraud accounted for $3.52 billion, technical support scams $1.04 billion, and confidence or romance scams $584 million. These are strangers reached over the internet.

The person with the checkbook is not in that number. There is no comparable national figure for the trusted helper, because most of it is never reported at all, and what is reported goes to Adult Protective Services or the local police rather than to the FBI. The absence of a statistic is not evidence that the exposure is small.

None of this says daily money managers steal. The great majority are honest, and the work they do is genuinely valuable. It says that if one did, the structures that would normally catch it are not there.

What you can check, since there is no register

Ask about the CDMM. The American Association of Daily Money Managers awards a Certified Daily Money Manager credential, formerly called the PDMM, on what it describes as exam, experience and ethics. Certification requires a minimum of 1,500 hours of paid daily money management work in the previous three years, plus continuing education to keep it current. It is voluntary, it is not a license, and it grants no authority. It does mean somebody outside the firm has looked.

Ask which one they have. Membership of the association and certification are different things, and a membership logo on a website is not a credential. Ask for the certification by name.

Ask about the bond, and know which bond you are asking about. General liability covers somebody slipping on the stairs. A fidelity bond, sometimes called an employee dishonesty bond, is the one that pays if an employee takes money. They are separate products and a firm can carry one without the other. Ask which, for how much, and ask for the certificate to come from the insurer rather than forwarded by the firm.

Ask when the background check was run, and how often it is repeated. A screen performed when someone was hired in 2019 says nothing about their circumstances now. Credit checks matter here in a way they do not in most jobs.

Ask whether the person in your house is an employee or an independent contractor. If they are a contractor, the firm's bond and insurance may not extend to them, which is the same question that decides liability in home care.

Ask for references from an attorney or an accountant who has worked alongside them, rather than from clients the firm selected.

The controls that matter more than any credential

Whoever writes the checks should not also reconcile the statements. That is the oldest rule in bookkeeping and it is broken in almost every household arrangement, usually by accident, usually because one person was the only one willing to help.

Have the bank send duplicate statements to a second person. A sibling, an accountant, an attorney, anyone other than the person managing the money. Most banks do this at no cost and it takes one phone call.

Ask for view-only online access rather than signature authority wherever the work allows it. Most banks offer read-only logins. A great deal of daily money management can be done with visibility and scheduled payments rather than with the power to move money freely.

Set alerts rather than relying on anyone to review afterward. Any transaction over a threshold you choose, any new payee added, any change of address or phone number on the account. Alerts arrive in real time. Reviews happen months later, if at all.

Keep a written list of expected payees and treat a new name on the account as an event worth a question, not an administrative detail.

Split the roles. One person should not hold the power of attorney, write the checks, receive the statements and file the taxes. Any two of those in different hands is a large improvement over all four in one.

Ask for a short written summary each month. Someone doing this properly will welcome it, because it protects them as much as it protects your parent. Reluctance to provide it is itself the finding.

Why this is not a category in the directory

Every provider published here appears because a person checked a license against the register that issued it and published the date of the check. Daily money management has no register, so there is nothing to check and no way to apply that standard.

We would rather explain the gap than open a category and put the same word behind a weaker test. If we ever do list this work, the page will not say verified. It will say precisely what was confirmed, precisely what nobody confirms, and leave the judgement with you.

Common questions

Do daily money managers need a license in Maryland?: No. Maryland's Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing regulates 25 professions through 21 boards, and daily money management is not among them. There is no state register to search, no state complaint process specific to the work, and no state authority that can suspend anyone from doing it.
What is a CDMM?: A Certified Daily Money Manager, a voluntary credential from the American Association of Daily Money Managers, formerly called the PDMM. It requires an exam, an ethics commitment, at least 1,500 hours of paid daily money management work in the previous three years, and continuing education to maintain. It is a professional certification, not a government license, and it confers no authority.
Does a power of attorney have to be bonded in Maryland?: No. A court-appointed guardian of the property must post a surety bond with the circuit court and file annual reports proving it remains in force. An agent under a power of attorney has fiduciary duties, including a duty to keep records of all receipts and disbursements, but posts no bond, completes no training and files nothing with any court.
What is the difference between a fidelity bond and liability insurance?: General liability covers accidents and injury. A fidelity bond, also called an employee dishonesty bond, covers theft by an employee. A firm can hold one and not the other, so ask which is in force, for what amount, and ask for the certificate from the insurer rather than a copy forwarded by the firm.
Is a family member a safer choice than a professional?: Not automatically. A family member is unlicensed, unbonded and unsupervised in exactly the same way, and is often under more financial pressure than a professional would be. The safeguards that matter are structural rather than personal: split the roles, send duplicate statements to a second person, use view-only access where possible, and set account alerts. Apply them regardless of who helps.

This page is general information, not legal, medical or financial advice. Program terms and statutory figures change. Confirm anything you intend to rely on with the issuing authority.