Continuing Education Position

 

Resolved October 2007

 

We believe,

Our bylaws clearly state that any changes to membership requirements such as Mandatory Continuing Education (MCE), can only be put in place by a 2/3 vote of the membership.

 

As part of a profession, it is essential that our members have a commitment to furthering their skills and knowledge as markets change and adapt. As serious investment professionals, our members commit to continuing education with an acceptable level of rigor by signing the Professional Conduct Statement each year and abiding by the Code of Ethics. The Code of Ethics reflects member’s responsibility to “maintain and improve their professional competence and strive to maintain and improve the competence of other investment professionals”.

 

In the case of the investment profession, the high degree of competition in the industry makes a commitment to continuing one's learning on a life-long basis a practical necessity.

 

The vast majority of our members are actively engaged in continuing education activities to a degree that far exceeds the normal time or activity requirement for typical mandatory programs. At no point should we ever assume otherwise.

 

The issue of MCE is more one of reporting and defining a structure than a fundamental question of conducting CE activities. The mechanics of any CE program need to be extremely efficient for our time constrained members.

 

Our history and culture suggests that clients are better served by a high-quality voluntary program with proper disclosure, like the CFA Program or GIPS compliance, than through a forced license or mandatory requirement.

 

Imposing a mandatory continuing education program specifically focused on new members has been considered in order to reinforce ongoing commitment to continuing education. The possibility of “grandfathering” our existing CFA Institute members was reviewed and dismissed due to concerns of imposing different requirements on a specific subset of our membership.

 

For these reasons, the Board does not believe it is in the best interest of our members to pursue a mandatory CE program at this time.

 

There is, however, a group of our members that believes fervently in MCE. We do not know the extent to which this belief is held.

 

Therefore, we conclude the following:

 

We reaffirm our staunch commitment to continuing education and support of life-long learning for our members.

 

We charge CFA Institute with further developing a high quality and comprehensive suite of Continuing Education (CE) offerings that will serve our members effectively and efficiently in their quest to best serve their clients ethically and competently.

 

We further charge CFA Institute with encouraging quality in a broad range of other products to meet the needs of our diverse membership. We commit to support our societies in their efforts to provide local access to quality educational products. We also commit to continue to look at ways to support the development of quality educational products by providers who aspire to meet our high standards for educational materials.

 

We charge CFA Institute with developing an easy CE reporting model, based on a concept of self-attestation. As a corollary, we ask CFA Institute to make the case as to why there are benefits to both the individual and to the organization at large for having a robust CE Program.

 

We charge CFA Institute with developing a means to recognize those who formally participate in the CE Program.

 

We will not pursue MCE at this time. However, this is not meant to discourage our members who believe in MCE from endeavoring to uncover the amount of support for their position. CFA Institute will consider providing resources for reasonable logistical support of a quality effort in this regard.

 

We will incorporate information in the CFA Program materials to heighten awareness of the importance of continuing education as a necessity for their professional participation in the investment industry. Further information will emphasize the commitment to life-long learning as part of the tenets of membership in CFA Institute.

 

We will commit to a robust implementation plan for these continuing education principles to ensure effective service for our members. This plan will include accountability and relevant metrics for ongoing review of the impact of a revised CE program.