Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Fintech is upon us - we know because the CFA Institute is expanding its weight in the curriculum!

Fintech gets real for CFA exam (from Pensions & Investments)

BY MEAGHAN KILROY · MAY 28, 2017

The CFA Institute is giving financial technology expanded weight in its curriculum and Chartered Financial Analyst examinations.

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Elements of fintech are already peppered throughout the curriculum, but starting in 2019, the institute expects to have readings that speak to it explicitly, said Lisa Plaxco, Charlottesville, Va.-based head of the CFA program at CFA Institute.

Areas of the curriculum in which elements of financial technology are already addressed are trading, private wealth and quantitative methods. “We expect to beef those up,” Ms. Plaxco said.

cfm.v27.n3For instance, a new private wealth reading that looks at how financial advice is being delivered, such as through robo-advisers, is planned for 2019.

Fintech also is expected to be addressed in a new section on professionalism that looks at current trends, among other things.


“Fintech is such a big area and is used to talk about a lot of different things,” Ms. Plaxco said. However, the four areas that the CFA has been hearing as the most relevant within fintech are financial analysis (big data analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithmic trading); portfolio management (robo-advisers and the equivalent on institutional platforms); capital formation (peer-to-peer lending, crowd funding and shadow banking); and market infrastructure (cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology for settlements, high-frequency trading and regulatory-related technology).