Charter thought

[10allie05]

Would the Charter be better recognized if there were more Charterholders?

Here is my thinking:

I think the estimate is 200,000 Charterholders around the world. If you think about all the countries and world population, that really isn’t very many. No wonder people have no clue this exists.

I am sure some of those no longer work, work in area unrelated to the Charter, or are in positions that aren’t very visible to the outside world.

I know the Institute wants to keep numbers low for prestige but I wonder if it is backfiring?

[Anbu]

My friend just received his charter, it says in the email they sent that the number of charterholders worldwide is 130,000. I think a bigger impact on recognition can be accomplished by promoting the charter to employers.

[Ron_Swanson]

CFA is pretty well known for a designation, other than CPA I can’t really thing of any non-degree credentials that are better know.

Also many people will never have the need to deal with a charterholder (unlike a CPA, where plenty of people need one to do their taxes) so it’s not like they need to know what it is.

Just about everyone who you might want to impress (future/ current employers/ clients) will probably already know about it or won’t care.

Not that it would be wrong of CFAI to promote to the rest of the world more, but I don’t think a low pass rate is backfiring

[CFAbeatmeup]

@CFAbeatmeup

Here’s where I disagree with most CFA Candidates and Charterholders. I think the problem is too few Charterholders; not too many. There are 120,000 CFA Charterholders (I believe) in the world. The problem is that’s a really low worldwide amount to form a fraternity. Don’t confuse “more” with “lower quality.”

The problem is you want to balance growing the number of Charterholders with keeping the quality of the education high. Something like offering a large discount (50% -75%) for Bulge-Bracket banks and Hedge Funds if they enroll their employees would most likely help all Charterholders. It’s likely these people will become decision-makers and hiring managers in the future (if they aren’t already). You can (and should) grow the number of Charterholders and you can do while keeping the quality high.

I said this earlier. It’s a balance for sure. You want to balance the rigor and quality of the Charter but 120,000 is simply too low to form a deep worldwide network. You have to be smart though. I’d say the CFAI could do so by offering discounts for Wall Street firms. That way instead of always hiring from target schools a hiring manager could say “I remember the CFA tests were hard and this guy has decent experience, let’s give him a shot.”

And normally I agree with Ron, but there’s a difference between saying “yah, I hear the CFA is a difficult designation” and “hey, I went through this beast and know it’s a huge committment so I picked your resume out of the 150 that applied for this job.”

[10allie05]

That is a good point. People who haven’t taken the test have no idea.

I know of a few Charterholders who are not in the field or retired but still pay dues to keep the Charter. It is pretty crazy thinking about how few there really are.