Since the mid 1990s the flow of the Level III curriculum began with behavioral finance, private wealth, institutional investor, economics, asset allocation, fixed income, equity, alternatives, risk mgt, trading, performance evaluation and GIPS. Notice how private wealth and institutional investor are upfront in the video series. In 2020, the CFA Institute changed the order flow to place private wealth and institutional investor toward the back of the curriculum. There are a few risks associated with this approach:
- Leaving the two biggest exam topics (PWealth and Inst) toward your exam window leaves you less time to review the topics before the exam
- You may not get to these topics if you started too late. In prior years, some candidates scramble to finish Perf Eval and GIPS because they ran out of prep time before the exam and just “winged” the topics on the exam and that didn’t go well.
Private wealth and institutional investor are one of largest topics on the exam and giving yourself plenty of time to prepare would be prudent.