Application for regular/affiliate membership

Hello everyone, I have a question about the following:

As I understand, there are two types of CFA memberships: regular (for those who completed all exams and have 4 years of experience) and affiliate (for the rest). Currently, I need 6 more months of work experience, thus I am not eligible for the regular membership.

Both of these memberships, require 2-3 professional references. My question is: if I successfully apply for the affiliate membership first, do the references used for this application carry forward when in the future I apply for the regular membership ? OR the references will need to be requested again ?

Thanks!

I don’t know. I do know I applied for regular membership and got accepted without passing any exams. They have a little ethics test to take as an alternative. If you are licensed in other things in the industry, the ethics questions aren’t that difficult. You should be familiar with the concepts. The President of my society recommended I go for regular membership. I submitted 96 months of experience and all of it got approved. I know I sound like a broken record sometimes, but you should contact your local society and ask. They want more members so if you qualify, they want to hear from you. They will help with references too.

You are right, I just checked the CFA official website, and yeah, for regular membership, the main criterion is only the 4 years of experience. FOr some reason I thought the regular membership is for the CFA charter-holders only.

However, I am still concerned whether I will need to re-request the references when I switch from affiliate to regular membership in the future.