Chartered Financial Analyst

[4] The predecessor of the CFA Institute, the Financial Analysts Federation (FAF), was established in 1947 as a service organization for investment professionals.

The FAF founded the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts in 1962; the earliest CFA charter-holders were "grandfathered" in through work experience only, but then a series of three examinations was established along with a requirement to be a practitioner for several years before taking the exams.

The CFA exam was first administered in 1963 and began in the United States and Canada, but has become global with many people becoming charter-holders across Europe, Asia, and Australia.

[16] The CFA curriculum is updated annually to reflect the latest best practices, with the extent of changes varying by year and level.

[18] As of 2019, the examination includes questions on artificial intelligence, automated investment services, and mining unconventional sources of data.

Some rules pertain more generally to professional behavior (such as prohibitions against plagiarism); others specifically relate to the proper use of the designation for charter-holders and candidates.

[23] The curriculum includes coverage of global markets as well as analysis and valuation of the various asset types: equity (stocks), fixed income (bonds), derivatives (futures, forwards, options, and swaps), and alternative investments (real estate, private equity, hedge funds, and commodities).

Level II focuses on valuation, employing the "tools" studied under quantitative methods, financial statement analysis, corporate finance, and economics.

Fixed income topics similarly include the various debt securities, the risk associated with these, and valuations and yield spreads.

There exist some academic research, which suggest evidence that differential analyst performance is economically significant,[24] supporting the predominance of signaling; furthermore research in the Financial Analysts Journal (a journal published by CFA Institute) suggests a positive human capital impact from the CFA program.

[25] Source:[26] Individuals who have passed all three levels of the CFA exams are eligible to skip the elective courses of the CBV Institute Program of Studies.

[58] The Society of Actuaries (SOA) granted the credit of "Validation by Educational Experience (VEE)-Economics" to the candidates who passed the CFA Level I exam.

SOA also granted both the credits of VEE-Corporate Finance and VEE-Applied Statistical Methods to the candidates who passed the CFA Level II exam.

[59] CFA charter-holders are exempted by the Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA) from the first required exam for the PRM qualification.

[62] The judgment prohibited ICFAI/CCFA and its members from using the CFA or Chartered Financial Analyst mark in the United States and Canada.

Further, the Delhi High Court issued an interim injunction ordering ICFAI and its affiliated Council of Chartered Financial Analysts to stop using CFA Institute trademarks.