[quote=njtosd][quote=davelj]That the CFA Institute – as an ORGANIZATION – professes to care about ethics should come as no surprise. Much as the American Institute of CPAs also professes to care about ethics, despite the clear conflicts that many CPAs face and often don’t handle particularly well. (Throw the American Bar Association vis-a-vis lawyers in there as well. I could go on.)
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I don’t know about the CFA Institute, but the American Bar Association is a voluntary group that is primarily educational in nature. It has no ability to enforce anything. Attorneys take state bar exams; professional ethics inquiries are handled by an office of the state (may or may not be the state bar association, depending on whether it’s an integrated bar). In any event, these organizations take ethics charges VERY SERIOUSLY, but they only investigate issues that are brought to their attention. So although there are lots of crooked lawyers out there, it is not the result of inattention by their bar associations (or equivalent). It’s the result of people not reporting problems (frequently because the clients who know about the transgressions aren’t squeaky clean either).[/quote]
I would say that’s a good description of how the CFA Institute operates as well. The problem being that they only have any authority whatsoever (which is minimal) over actual charterholders. And the percentage of folks who hold a charter is a tiny percentage (2%?) of the total number of financial services professionals. So, despite their best efforts, the CFA Institute’s ability to enforce ethics in the financial services industry at large is… practically nil.
