Members' Guide to 2022 Refresher Readings

We know from your feedback that our members value Refresher Readings. We strive every year to make these Refresher Readings more targeted and to deliver the knowledge and insight that members seek to remain competent investment professionals.

Our aim is to increase the relevance of the CFA^® Program, putting the real-life, day-to-day experience of investment professionals at the heart of the curriculum. And this approach does not apply solely to the curriculum. We plan to expand our portfolio of learning offerings, providing investment professionals who seek to upskill and reskill with high-quality practitioner-relevant content that can be integrated into their workflow.

We have introduced many new readings and revisions to the 2022 curriculum, adding to the large number of improvements made in recent years to respond to changing investment markets and practices. We have streamlined readings, making them more accessible through more engaging narratives and with the improved use of visual aids and practical examples.

The key changes in the 2022 curriculum broadly fall into six categories: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG); Ethics; Alternative Investments; Corporate Issuers; Investment Analysis; and Fixed Income:

• The evolving approach to ESG focuses on analysis of how well companies fare from an ESG standpoint. Innovative new content sets out, for example, possible approaches used to identify a company’s, or an industry’s, material ESG risks.
• Brand-new ethics content, inspired by actual events, illustrates many aspects of the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct. This content makes it intuitive to identify scenarios that apply to your particular area of interest.
• Growing investor focus on alternative investments has led to an expansion of this topic in the curriculum, with new readings demonstrating how alternatives may be deployed in a portfolio. Foundational knowledge is combined with exploration of how alternative asset classes, risk management, and alternative investment structures work.
• Substantial new content focusing on corporate issuers presents the choices a company makes when raising and using capital. Many practical examples and explanations illustrate why and how companies’ capital choices vary over their lifecycles.
• Investment analysis techniques are always evolving, and several readings contain substantial new content on quantitative methods, thereby aligning the curriculum more closely to investment professionals’ experience of an artificial intelligence–driven world. The focus is resolutely on the practical, with engaging visuals and code snippets.
• Finally, in an era of low interest rates, members will want to know how fixed-income portfolios are managed by their peers. New content on yield curve and credit strategies, as well as interest rate dynamics, offers valuable and practical insight.