How does the CAIA Association determine what finance professionals need to know to bear the CAIA designation?

It meets this challenge by employing a full-time team of leading alternative investment academics and practitioners as well as expert volunteers and consultants, all of whom make up the CAIA Curriculum team. Its charge: teach candidates the core competencies required to create, manage, and monitor an institutional quality portfolio of financial investments.

CAIA Association's in-house authors are the Program Director, Level I Manager, Level II Manager, and Project Manager. The Curriculum team also relies on contributions from expert consultants and volunteers, such as the Curriculum Advisory Council, Exam Council, and CAIA Curriculum Committees, who play key roles in content generation and review. The councils and committees work to identify topics and articles for consideration in the program and draft and review learning objectives and exam questions. The Curriculum Advisory Council is responsible for deciding which elements and topics need to be covered. Everyone on the team is ultimately involved with writing and reviewing original material as well as reviewing journal articles for possible inclusion in the Core and Integrated Topics book.

Our work not only includes writing and editing of our textbooks (Knowledge Series Level I, Knowledge Series Level II, and Knowledge Series Level II: Core and Integrated Topics) but also assembling study guides, which serve as the structure and roadmap for candidates following the comprehensive self-study program. For each of these pieces of the CAIA curriculum, our team and its supporters consider the Association's varied audience of investment professionals, which includes consultants and service providers, fund managers, portfolio managers, analysts and wealth advisors, and regulators.

Learn more at the CAIA Curriculum page.

By Jeanne Miller, Associate Director, Curriculum Project Manager