I’ve managed to pass all 3 levels, read through Schweser and CFAI notes extensively. From day 1 I’ve had it drummed in to my head that you can’t call someone a CFA, or Chartered Financial Analyst, yet have never seen any logic or reasoning for this rule. Take, for example, an accountant who receives a charter from their national body, they are now a “Chartered Accountant” as opposed to just an accountant. Logic would also say that if you work as an analyst, specifically in the financial field, and you receive a charter to that effect, that you should have the right to be called a " Chartered Financial Analyst". The whole thing is ridiculous and makes no sense given that the word “analyst” is a noun. You are supposed to refer to charterholders as “CFA charterholders”, if you were to expand the abbreviation “CFA”, then this title is nonsense. And how far are we supposed to go to correct people that use CFA in the wrong way? All clients and people that haven’t done the programme refer to charterholders as CFAs. Are we supposed to correct clients that refer to the designation incorrectly, saying something like “actually, it is incorrect to refer to someone as a CFA, they are in fact a CFA charterholder”. They will think you are an absolute tool for saying something like that. Maybe the answer is the fact that accounting charters are issued by professional bodies with statutory authority (i.e. royal charters) whereas CFAI is just another private organisation, and has no statutory authority to award “charters”. Just wondering if anyone else had information or had ever questioned this stupid rule?
rant off…
agreed
http://www.cfainstitute.org/aboutus/policies/cfaguide.html The CFA mark must not be used generically and should only be used as an adjective. The mark becomes generic when it is used as a common name for a category of products or services. References to all facial tissues as Kleenexes, all photocopies as Xeroxes, and all financial analysts as “CFAs” are improper and are considered generic. If the use become generic, CFA charterholders lose their exclusive use of these valuable marks. If you are using the marks correctly, you should be able to omit the CFA from a sentence and still have the sentence make sense. For example, “John Smith is a CFA charterholder.”
i completely agree… i say go ahead and use it in noun sense except when you have to write resumes or give public speaking sessions. let them have their way. there is no sense complaining unless you wanna go ball s to the wall and start a movement, and who has time for that. no one knows anyways that you can use it as noun. use it to pump, but dont go official is my opinion
Absolutely right. As far as I can see the only choices are “John Smith, Chartered Financial Analyst”, “John Smith, CFA”, or “John Smith is a CFA Charterholder”. Often it won’t be appropriate to write one of the first two, so you end up with the third. The problem is that many people don’t know what a CFA Charterholder is and end up having to ask. Any other suggestions?
Fair enough points. I don’t think it would ever become a generic term if used as a noun, pass rate is too low and not that many people have it. I definitely would never correct anyone that used it “incorrectly”, you would just sound like a dick.
Hahaha Dave, that’s so true (the sounding like a dick part).
It’s fun to rant about this (I enjoy it too), but it’s best to let the CFAI have their way on this. Just not a fight worth having. I did note that it is acceptable to say something like: bchadwick, Chartered Financial Analyst which is odd, because the grammatical term for that is “apposition,” and it would imply that Chartered Financial Analyst is the same part of speech as bchadwick, which would be a noun. The stranger thing is that CFAI seems to assert that there is no such thing as a Chartered Financial Analyst, even though there might be financial analysts who hold the charter. Stranger still, it suggests that the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute is an institute representing something that does not itself exist. It’s a bit like the “Flat Earth Society” claiming it has “offices around the globe.”
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The stranger thing is that CFAI seems to assert > that there is no such thing as a Chartered > Financial Analyst, even though there might be > financial analysts who hold the charter. Stranger > still, it suggests that the Chartered Financial > Analyst Institute is an institute representing > something that does not itself exist. It’s a bit > like the “Flat Earth Society” claiming it has > “offices around the globe.” LOL. I like this.
Whatever. Use CFA as a noun if you want. Nobody really cares. Their reasoning is stupid – for example, accountants with CPAs are called CPAs, but it is very clear that having a CPA is a valuable designation.