Not a CFA charterholder (still Level III passed and no one can take it away from me)

Asked by several people whether I recommend to spend at least 1,000 hours (and some money) to earn CFA designation, I advise them to weigh up their priorities in life and whether they are ready to sacrifice at least three years finding time nearly each day to sit diligently for the exam.

I am proud of passing all three levels at first attempts, although I reminisce the fortnight before Level III as a nightmare, of being statistically one in seven candidates to have been eligible for the charter. The three-stage self-study course does not only test your wits (undoubtedly one must to be smart to grasp intricate concepts and get familiar with 3,000 pages of curriculum before each exam), but mostly determination and consistency.

In 2015 after handling all formalities I was awarded a charter, which I used for subsequent two years. For mere 350 USD per year (of which 75 USD goes to CFA Society Poland) I was entitled to put “, CFA” after my surname and could brag about being a part of financial world’s elite. My company refused to refund my the annual dues, saying the CFA qualification was not essential to perform my job (slap on my face, but shame on the New Factory, not me). I forked out to CFA Institute seven hundred US dollars in exchange of which I received their bulletins and participated in a few conferences (entrance to most of which was free of charge for non-charterholders). In 2017 I made up my mind to notice benefits much surpass costs and resolved not to pay a single dollar to CFA Institute. I had to dump my business cards and have them replaced by new ones, stopped using the CFA title and until now consider that step to be right.

On Monday I received the message to the right. At first I thought it was spam and afraid of clicking on the link I ran it via my antivirus programme whose check confirmed it was safe (BTW a fancy way of communicating via send-this-file confirms the highest standards CFA Institute abides by).

It turned out to be the second letter from CFA Institute (I do not recall getting the first one, dated 13 November 2018, since I probably had considered it a spam, especially if the message had looked like this and ignored it) in which they sent a print-screen of my LinkedIn profile, where I was claiming to be holding the CFA designation and threatened to take disciplinary and other actions against me. I wonder whether their threats to publish my name are in line with EU’s directive General Data Protection Regulation (in Poland known as RODO)…

Truth be told, not erasing the CFA designation (I have mended my ways immediately) was my omission and mistake, so I wrote a remorseful response in which I contritely apologised for the non-compliance with CFA Institute standards, they replied they were fine with it.

Topic closed, yet even if one day my present or future employer offered to pay my annual dues, I would refuse to resume my membership. CFA Institute looks like a sectarian organisation founded on candidates’ desire to hold a prestigious certification. I do not want to have the CFA Institute in-crowd to live lavishly off my back and offering me little in return. Besides, for a few years they have been working on differentiating the annual dues depending on geography (350 USD in Wall Street or n Canary Wharf is not the same in terms of purchasing power as in Warsaw or let alone Kiev where such contribution is more than a daylight robbery) and they are too slugging to proceed with it. Shame on them!