If prestigious employers and exclusive universities give a resume its horsepower, professional credentials play the role of a direct shift transmission.

The investment business has spawned an alphabet soup of three-letter and four-letter acronyms. Perhaps the best-known is the venerable and widely held CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst), inaugurated in 1963. However, the CFA is by no means the only professional designation embraced within the corridors of finance. Here's a profile of four other credentials, the functional roles or asset classes they relate to, and how you can attain them.

Hedgies Get Their Own Acronym

The Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) program focuses on "alternative" investment vehicles, such as hedge funds, private equity, commodities, real estate and managed futures. A relative newcomer, the CAIA has grown rapidly, in tandem with the boom in hedge funds and PE. The initial 2003 CAIA class comprised just 43 members. By mid-2007, their cumulative number surpassed 1,000.

The CAIA program is structured much like the CFA. Its core consists of two four-hour exams that cover a broad curriculum in alternative investments. The Level I exam emphasizes quantitative analysis, investment theory, regulatory issues, trading strategies and performance measurement, as applied to various classes of alternative investments. Level II requires putting the skills and knowledge from Level I to higher-level work, such as asset allocation, portfolio oversight, style analysis and attribution, risk management, securitization, indexation and benchmarking.

In addition to the two exams, the CAIA charter requires at least a year of finance industry experience and two professional references.
 

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