Next Saturday, 157 Bermuda-based candidates will take a gruelling examination that will help them on the long road to becoming a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

They will be among nearly 100,000 candidates world-wide taking level one, two or three of the CFA exam. To become a CFA charterholder, they will need to pass all three levels — and only 19 percent of candidates achieve that.

It's been described by The Economist and the Financial Times as "the gold standard" of the investment profession and with the same exam, in English only, being sat in 89 countries during the same 24 hours, it is truly a global qualification. Bermuda College is the local CFA exam venue.

Getting the letters "CFA" after your name on your business card can open the door to many employment opportunities, but achieving that is far from easy. Four years' work experience is a requirement and the CFA Institute recommends an absolute minimum of 250 hours' study for each of the three levels.

With its 236 CFAs, the Island already has more CFAs per capita than anywhere else in the world. And if any of the 25 from Bermuda who are taking their level three test at the weekend are successful, that figure will increase.

Last week Robert Johnson, managing director of the CFA Institute's education division, was in Bermuda, together with a group of CFA volunteers who were meeting to craft some of the questions for the 2008 exams.

Mr. Johnson said the CFA designation was trusted world-wide, because it was based on the key tenets of knowledge, work experience and ethics. Its low pass rate and the fact that the same exam applied world-wide made it a better indicator of aptitude than academic qualifications, he said.

All CFA Institute members must sign up to the CFA Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, which has added to employers' liking for the qualification, especially since the wave of corporate scandals, such as Enron, WorldCom and Parmalat.

"When the markets were going up like crazy, no-one wanted to hear about ethics," Mr. Johnson said. "But with all the scandals that happened, it's given us an opportunity to extol our message. I wouldn't wish a scandal on anyone, but now at least people are willing to listen."

Globally, the CFA designation is becoming more recognised and more sought-after. Since 1990, registration in the CFA programme world-wide has increased at a compound annual growth rate of 16 percent.

Much of the growth has come from the developing economies of Asia. For example, 129 percent more people registered for the CFA programme in India this year than they did last year, while in mainland China the figure was 30 percent more. But there is also strong growth in France (36 percent), Germany (25 percent), the UK (20 percent) and the US (9 percent).

It is all a far cry from 1963, when 284 candidates sat the first CFA exam. Now there are 90,944 CFA Institute members around the world.

Joseph Zuiker, vice-president of the CFA Society of Bermuda and head of financial reporting at the Bank of Bermuda, said: "The CFA programme is good training for many different jobs. In Bermuda, we have CFAs who work for banks, insurance companies, mutual fund and hedge fund managers, portfolio managers and trust administrators.

"Training programmes are expensive and difficult to plan for employers. The CFA programme is a self-study course, with all the necessary materials and fees costing around $3,000. It offers an inexpensive alternative."

Alex Werther, president of the CFA Society of Bermuda and vice-president of private banking at Butterfield Bank, said: "People who enrol on the CFA programme can be those just starting their career in the investment industry, who may be interested in gaining a greater technical understanding; they may be accounting professionals who see this as an opportunity to diversify their experience, or they may be people looking for lateral career movement."

The average age of of a candidate in the CFA programme is 30. Its four-year work experience requirement means that it is designed for those who are working in the investment industry rather than for students.

But the CFA principles have proved appealing to several academic centres. Some, Mr. Johnson said, including Oxford University, South Africa's University of Pretoria and several universities in the US, Canada and Asia, have worked with the CFA to design post-graduate programmes based on CFA material.

*For more information on the CFA Institute, log on to its web-site at http://www.cfainstitute.org