format change? (level 3), passing rate plunge? greater visibility?
to have any realistic meaning pass rates need to come down - otherwise it devalues the whole thing.
the commercial exploitation of candidates and members - targetted for what are billed as networking events, but are really hosted by headhunters is not what most people had in mind when forking out the membership each year. this is expensive compared to cfa membership - which gives you more cerdibility, and which you doesn’t require explanation of what it actually is.
at the moment it seems to be run more as a for-profit organisation - this needs to change.
They need a critical mass before they can start lowering pass rates. I’ve got the 6869th charter.
That’s still a pretty small pool of people. More people will take the CFA exam in Mumbai this year than that.
The program really needs to get big institutional people behind it.
GARP was clever to make the FRM exam a moderately-priced 1-level exam until the chartholders numbered in the tens of thousands.
The two-level structure of the CAIA program exams (with no waivers even for CFAs!), plus the high cost of attaining the CAIA charter, will limit the growth of the CAIA designation.