The Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association, the global leader in alternative investment education, on Thursday announced the launch of a new initiative designed to foster education and understanding around the roles that increasing digitization and fintech are playing in the next growth phase of the financial services industry.
These developments portend a different skill set and entry point for a complementary set of professionals who will potentially be working side-by-side with CAIA Charterholders and other more traditional financial service professionals.
The Chartered Alternative Data Analyst (CADA) Institute will be a CAIA-affiliated organisation tasked with examining the need to build an exam-based curriculum for professionals whose expertise in data and technology will likely play a more significant role in the future of financial analysis and decision making.
"The rise of robo-advisors, the growing role of artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning, and the increasing use of sentiment analysis and unstructured data, are all concrete examples of the ways in which finance and financial analysis are becoming increasingly digitized," said CEO, CAIA, William Kelly.
"These changes will define a different skill set for certain professionals, highlighting the need for perhaps a new set of ethical standards and business practices built for an industry that increasingly measures its efforts in terabytes and nanoseconds," Kelly added.
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The CADA Institute will be forming an advisory board comprised of allocators, academics, investment professionals, data scientists, information technology leaders, cryptocurrency experts, and other key stakeholders to study and ultimately answer what digitization means for a new breed of professionals coming into this space.
It is anticipated that existing CAIA members will be playing a lead role as they are in the best position to determine the stackable skills to complement the existing Charter.
"The investment industry is heading toward its 'Uber moment,'" said Dr. Hossein Kazemi, Ph.D. and Senior Advisor to the CAIA Program.
"And as the transportation industry has seen with Uber, the disruption won't stop on a surface level. Every job function in the financial services industry will be impacted by the rise of artificial intelligence, machine learning, distributed ledger technology, data analytics, peer-to-peer funding platforms and other fast-moving technological changes that will make specialized knowledge increasingly in demand," he added.
The CAIA Association was founded in 2002 to meet the growing demand for education and professionalism in the area of alternative investments, coincident with the timing of wide institutional adoption of these strategies.
That experience resulted in a global curriculum and credentialing model that is now the industry standard for excellence in 90+ countries. This experience puts CAIA into a very natural position of leadership in an investment landscape that will continue to lean in a more digital direction.
The CADA Institute and the planning of the curriculum are in the early stages of development and all questions, inquiries or solicitations of interest should be directed to cadainstitute@caia.org.
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