I agree with you Greenman on that. A couple of examples of people who are smart and failed doesnt mean much to arrive at a conclusion. (Just like the example of a prof I had given :))
Cool i can now proudly say one day i cracked th toughest financ exam in the world .
^ At up
I Couldnt resist to add one more thing. These pass rate statistics for CFA candidates are from those who actually attempted the exam i.e. Minus no show ones.
Make sure that the stats you posted for CA exams are for those candidates who actually attempted the exam and not just filled the form for the examination. Appearing for CA exam costs peanuts in India compared to the CFA examination.
@ Greenman . I only mentioned these guys because they were coached with me for L 1 and all were pretty serious people.
^Couldnāt have been that serious. All the math skills in the world and couldnāt pass Level 1 after six tries?
And THEY were coaching YOU? I guess that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
^ My bad I edited my comment.
I think i i am biased maybe because i failed in CA inter ā¦
Being from India, I can say that Indian CA is the most Overrated degree in the whole world.
ICAI has no standards and declares results / sets papers w/o any scientific reasoning behind it.
Indian CAs also think of themselves to be Financial Wizards, when infact many of them donāt know anything. This is from past experience of working with them.
Also Dummy artcileship is common in India, so many CAs have no professional knowledge when they passout.
All in all CFA adds more value imo then CA.
Finally someone from Indian finance industry has chipped in. The Indian CA is like a organized syndicate. I am yet to meet a CA who understands Bonds duration and Convexity. They have simply never heard of it??? I just cross checked it with 2 CAs from my bank while I am typing this.
And I am not even speaking about immunization and key rate durations and synthetic Call and put structures, callable bonds , their valuation , Binomial valuation and Black scholes valuation and related arbitrage strucutures. Mentioning Treynor Black and Monte Carlo simulation would be a travesty in front of a CA. I doubt if they know the relative valuation methodologies and residual income valuation methodologies also valuation of a private co. and the discounting methods used. I am ready to get crucified publicly if they know anything about H model and 3 stage Dividend Discount Model. I think someday calculating the country risk premium becomes statutory and they stumble upon it that they know nothing about it.
I wont even speak about the efficient frontier, Black litterman and other advance approaches in portfolio mgmt. All this after all those 6 month interval tests and groups tsk! tsk!
They only might know more about Indian taxes, company law and costing. I dont understand zilch why they are taken in Finance over a CFA charterholder!???":
I work with a mid sized public sector bank in India, in its head office where I am exposed to a whole gamut of CA stuff like Indian Taxes and Finalization of BS. I handle the segment reporting for this bank. A little something ordinary Bcom guy with 10+ years of experience does the whole finalization thing. A CA is not needed for this. CA only handles the banks taxation and I can vouch for it that he doesnt even know many things about Banks taxation and relies on the experienced person I mentioned above.
They should stop claiming superiority if any. If you chide a CA aspirant about this and she is enarged to no end!
Yes ICAI does have an issue how to check exams. There is huge fluctuations in passing %.
From 25 % in some year to 5% in another year. Also very poor checking methods where so many candidates pass due to revaluation.
In CFA atleast we are sure if we get 70% we will pass .
Sometimes in CA students just get crucified due to ICAI stupid checking
a video showing CA answersheet being checked in local train without even seeing the answers
^gone are the days. Now even first-time passers percentage is more than that (fluctuating between 5-10%).
Itās amazing how they mark the paper copy.
Nowadays markers receive scans of scripts. And they use marking software where you put marks on the sides and they are automatically calculated.
Besides that markers spend on average 10, max 15 minutes marking each paper. Maybe up to 30 minutes of the first few scripts but then they know the marking key by heart.
anyone that passes the CFA or obtains their CA gets my respect. Though Bruce Lee was better than Jackie Chan, even though Jackie isnāt half bad.
There is hardly a job in India for CFA people now
Boom and bustā¦
-
If you havenāt done both then you probably canāt write an educated comment on the topic since you have not experienced both exams
-
You canāt say one is harder merely because less have obtained the charter. It may just be that more people find one certification to be crap vs the other or see no benefit in getting the credential. (definitely not my opinion)
That being said, I passed both the CPA & CFPĀ® the first time around & have passed both levels 1 & 2 of the CFA exam. My opinion is that the CFA is more difficult than both the CPA & CFPĀ® combined partly because I came from an accounting background & partly because the material to be tested is so voluminous in the CFA program. The CFPĀ® was the same way, but the material was more basic. The CPA had just as difficult of material, but it was more focused & could be taken in sections (here in the US anyway) while you are expected to spew all the CFA material on one long day.
IMO 
@Chris 400
I am also a CPA and hopefully soon a CFA Charterholder (waiting on L3 results).
I wonder about the difficulty of the CFP, and whether itās worth pursuing. I doubt Iād learn anything from it, but as a CPA in public practice, having the initials might be a boon to my credibility with clients.
At any rate, I studied about 250 hours for the whole CPA exam (all four levels). And I would be exempt from all the classes and tests for the CFP. Just to pass the capstone and the final exam, how many hours should a CPA/CFA reasonably expect to spend completing the CFP?
Hi Greenman,
I did it between the CPA & CFA so I didnāt have the CFA knowledge that you & I do now. That being said, I studied about 200 hours from July to mid-November for the CFPĀ®. As you probably know, you get an āexpressā ticket to sit for the CFPĀ® exam if you have the CPA, so you wouldnāt have to sit through all the classes & exams that normally lead to the real deal - you can just schedule & take it. (I used Schweser to study & it was excellent)
With your background, I would say that you could probably get by with 100-150 hours of study time & expect to pass - I think itās roughly 50% pass rate. Other than insurance, there isnāt really anything new that you wouldnāt have seen in the CPA/CFA programs.
Topics are: Income Tax Planning (done it), Retirement Planning (done it), Estate Planning (some difficulty here), Investments (no-brainer), Insurance Planning (Need some studying) & Fundamentals (easy)
Tax & Estate Planning are more technical areas, insurance is a crapshoot as to what they will ask & investments/planning tend to be more client cases & recommendations so it is pretty doable.
With clients in the financial planning world, the CFPĀ® does have a good reputation, but because I have done most of all three I give the least respect to CFPĀ®. When I was a practicing CPA in public practice I got more respect that just having the CPA because it was different & unique. Having more than one designation also sets you apart from all the other people with just one credential behind their name. (whether that makes us smarter or not is debatable though - haha)
Hope this helps!
First I would like to make some disclaimers:
-
CA for me is the Indian CA ( So my Opinion is solely comparing Indian CA and CFA),
-
I am an Indian Chartered Accountant so my opinion may be biased,
-
I am a CFA Level 2 candidate also- So have not yet seen the entire monstor yet,
4)l My comparison is simply based on the difficulty in being able to complete these two gigantic courses and not the attributes that an individual needs,etc
In case of CA, the procedure to become a member is very much similar to CFA, you need to pass 3 levels and have 3.5 years of work experience. The pass percentage is though lower and the average years to finish the course is longer too.
Personally, I donāt think I will ever go through the amount of effort that I put to clear my CA exam.(This is after me clearing all 3 levels in my first attempt).
Believe it or not friendsthe CFA designation is the most difficult program both to pass and to obtain among all finance related certifications !! some of you guys are only being unobjective and sarcastic with your thoughts and contributions. How many CFA charterholders do we have accross globally compared to other programs not to talk about those who donāt want to even come close to giving it a try. CFA standard for qualification criteria for the charter is too much to phantom not to mention the extreme rigirousness of the 3 level exams versus other prof exams. i have a reseanable idea of other certifications and trust me most of them are no where near the CFA. Let be a lil bit fair here. thanx.
We cannot overlook the fact here that the pass percentage of CA ( Indian CA) is around 5% or so for each of the levels, whereas for CFA the passing percentages are very high compared to thatā¦