Became a charter holder last year, but 90% of employers I come upon seriously don’t care, current one won’t cover membership fees out of principle (despite my role as the investment manager) so I just let it expire.
To all who have invested your free time to improve yourselves through this curriculum, you should feel proud of your determination and austerity, this attitude is probably worth much more than the charter, but many on this forum seem to think they are taking one of the most difficult and valuable test, which is simply misleading and irresponsible to young people who are already facing a terrible job market.
CFA from my perspective:
[2019] 0 finance background, harsh hours (8am-8pm) in a corp job so I thought might as well try finance, passed Level 1 with two months of sleepless studying Schweser notes and CFAI practice questions, though some say passing Level 1 can give you the chance of breaking into the industry, it felt meager.
[2020] very busy in a small investment JV (entered through networking, they did not care about CFA) but with some (maybe a lot of) luck I passed Level 2 only by doing CFAI practice questions and reading the explanations, some website was claiming passing Level 2 was regarded as a Master’s in some countries, but COVID hit so who knows.
[2021] (1/2) a week before Level 3, the test building was closed off due to major safety issues that made headlines, CFAI did not give any clear responses (as always) to what to do, building miraculously re-opened, but I rushed through the entire CBT test because dying was #notworth and failed, by the way for Level 3 I used MM to be safe (not against building collapsing).
[2021] (2/2) I signed up again, but when I went to the test center they seem to have forgotten I was coming (during these times Level 3 test takers in my region were sometimes in the low single digits, so I might have been the only one that day), told me CFAI was not responsible for test center mishaps therefore I still needed to pay, fought them for a few weeks, let me retake for free, meanwhile I was close to finishing an actual post-grad in finance.
[2022] passed Level 3, waited until I had enough work experience to carefully explain the finance nature of each role, was told to wait a few weeks for review but received an email within hours to PAY PAY PAY
[2023] my city has huge CFA ads everywhere, thought I’d drop by the local society where an entire side of building was plastered with CFA, turns out the actual HQ was across the street in the run-down alleyway cramped into a derelict office with dead beat admins who had nothing to offer and flat out just told me to visit the CFA website for resources, but all I found was news about the test now includes watching videos at home cool
other observations:
- most roles don’t require CFA, if they did you can start taking them after getting in and get rewarded, getting the charter beforehand rarely makes or breaks you getting admitted in the first place, putting a fraction of CFA study hours into networking and learning specific skills for the role does
- some department heads (top banks) I know refrain from hiring charter holders in case their boss be like “hey why don’t the rest of y’all get one too?”
- actual useful things in life don’t rely on excessive marketing, especially when there are no clear alternatives in the first place, recall the last instance you were marketed the benefits of taking this exam, was it not through some course/study material provider?