CFA briefing cum Information Session

So, my parents and extended family are here, ready for Saturday’s big day. That doesn’t stop the clock as far as the CFA goes, and on Friday evening I attended a CFA briefing cum Information Session, run by CFA Singapore. The evening was interesting inasmuch as I found that many members at the session seemed to be university students. Others were I guess drawn from a large cross-section of the usual suspects (I-Banking, consulting et cetera). We also learnt that the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation is the largest employer of CFA charter-holders in Singapore. GIC employs 89, whilst the next employer - Citigroup – employs 72). Finally, we also learnt that Singapore has the largest amount of CFA charter-holders per capita in the world.

Unsurprising, given that even the CFA brochure recounts that, in relation to one charter-holder “… the head of the Government Investment Corp. (GIC) in Singapore, whom she highly respected, strongly recommended the CFA Program to her. “I felt that if I could be anywhere near as successful as he is I had to get myself a CFA [charter].” You go girl.

But we did learn some interesting stuff as well. Like the fact that whilst the pass rate is kept secret these days, it sued to be 70% of the top percentile. So if the top dog gets 100%, the pass rate is 70% and so on. Yikes! Well, the CFA is essentially an American certificate, and that is a very American way of grading. At University you often hear rumours of Harvard et al. failing the bottom 10%, and giving distinctions to those in the top 10%.

The exam day itself is two 3 hour exams (one in the morning, and one in the afternoon), and we should get the results 6 weeks after the exam.

This looks tougher than anything I’ve done before, and I do wish I’d paid more attention to Financial Analysis at Uni (youthful exuberance and a devotion to qualitative methods…)