Author Archives: Joshua M. Howard, CFA

A Letter from Our President

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Joshua M. Howard, CFA

Society members –

This is my final letter to you as President of CFA Society Minnesota – my two-year term as President comes to an end this month. At our annual meeting last week, the membership voted in the new slate of board members and executive officers, including your new President, Mark Peiler, CFA. I will be assuming the role of Immediate Past President for the next two years, then my service on the board will end (though not my participation in the Society).

Before I depart, I would like to thank a few people. First, I want to thank all of the past Presidents of CFA Society Minnesota that I served with during my time on the board: Tony Carrideo, CFA, Leyla Kassem, CFA, Robert Buss, CFA and Kim Brustuen, CFA. Your vision and commitment laid the groundwork for the transformation of the Society that has occurred over the past eight years. When I joined the board in 2009, the Society’s activities were restricted to a monthly lunch, a golf outing and an annual economic dinner. Thanks to the leadership and energy of Tony, Leyla, Robert and Kim we now offer a wide range of activities that meet the needs of almost any member. These range from half-day Insight series programs, a major investor conference, periodic distinguished speaker events, a well-attended annual new charterholder dinner, and plenty of free happy hours and networking events.

Second, I want to thank all the board members and committee volunteers I have served with during my time on the board. Their hard work and ideas led to many new initiatives, including the very successful compensation survey, which has grown from a local survey to one that now includes the entire Midwest and a few states outside our region. The Membership Committee runs a mentoring program that over the past few years has connected dozens of younger financial professionals with experienced industry veterans. Seven years ago, our Education Committee launched our own intensive review courses for all three levels of the CFA exam, which have served hundreds of candidates since their launch.

Besides these new programs, our Strategic Planning Committee spent a good portion of the last five years rewriting our mission and vision, as well creating a new, 3-5 year strategic plan. We also updated our bylaws, aligning these with best practices in governance and our relationship with the CFA Institute. Anyone who has ever tried to write a mission statement or attempted to craft a strategic plan knows how much work goes into these endeavors, and I want to thank everyone on the Board who helped with these documents.

I also want to sincerely thank our staff – Mark Salter, Amanda Sullivan and Diane Senjem, along with former staff members Kris Kautzman and Maren Amdal – for all their hard work over the years. None of the programs and activities mentioned above could have happened without their efforts. They took every idea we threw at them and somehow turned them into reality, no matter how far-fetched or challenging they seemed.

Finally, I want to thank you, our members. Thank you for volunteering with the Society, for attending events, for paying your dues, for suggesting how we can improve and for occasionally reading these letters. Thank you for adhering to the highest standard of ethics, for your commitment to the industry and for mentoring the next generation of investment professionals. We have accomplished a lot in the past eight years with your input and help, and I look forward to attending events alongside you as a regular Society member in the future.

Josh Howard, CFA
President, CFA Society Minnesota

A Letter from Our President

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Joshua M. Howard, CFA

Society Members –

I hope your summer is going well. I want to update you on a few items. As you may have noticed we are asking you to perform a few actions this summer – voting on our bylaws, renewing your membership and voting on our board candidates. We sincerely appreciate everyone who has taken the time to tackle all three issues, and I ask (actually beg and plead) the rest of you to make sure you participate in both votes and the membership renewal before our annual meeting on August 17th.

I also want to raise an issue with you that I am sure you will hear discussed soon by the CFA Institute. The topic is Continuing Professional Development (CPD), aka continuing education. Currently as CFA Charterholders we are not required to do any CPD, though we are asked each year to certify that we have performed a minimal amount of CPD. As members who hold other certifications can attest the CFA Institute is one of the few professional organizations in the world that does not require some kind of CPD. That was fine when we were a very small organization and nobody outside of investment management knew what CFA stood for, but now we are a global body of more than 100,000 charterholders, and work in roles that face clients and prospects much more frequently than we used to.  Many of us get asked by clients and prospects to describe the rigor of the examinations, which is equal to or higher than most any other designation, but also to describe our continuing education program, which can be an embarrassing topic to address.

The current President of the CFA Institute, Paul Smith, CFA has stated, on more than one occasion, that he wants to address CPD before he retires from his role. It has been a decade or more since we have addressed continuing education as a global body and it is a good time to revisit the issue. Many of the arguments against CPD in the past, such as the difficulty in recording credits (currently a manual process completed by CFAMN staff) and in finding events that qualify for CPD, are now being resolved by the Institute. The new member app and other technologies will make finding classes, articles and webinars that qualify for credit much easier, and will automatically record credits as you complete the reading or event, which together will make achieving your learning goals much less burdensome.

Please let me know if you have thoughts or suggestions related to CPD and the best way to implement it if we move forward with a CPD requirement.

Josh Howard, CFA
President, CFA Society Minnesota

A Letter from Our President

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I just returned from the 2017 CFA Institute Society Leadership Conference, held this year in Philadelphia. I have now attended seven Institute conferences for Society leaders over the past six years, covering both Society Leadership and America’s Regional conferences. It was also likely my last Society Leadership Conference, as I will finish my term as President of CFA Society Minnesota in August.

The Society Leadership Conference is attended by 2-3 representatives from all of the CFA Societies around the world. It is one of my favorite things I get to do as a Society rep, as I love mingling with industry practitioners from Ireland, Vietnam, Argentina, Vancouver, Qatar, Germany, Australia, Shenzhen and dozens more countries and cities from around the world. Regardless of where we call home we have the shared experience of having taken (and passed) all three CFA exams, in English, on the first Saturday in June over the course of 3, 4 or 10 years.

As I have mentioned in prior letters these conferences get better every year. The theme this year was “The Power of the Personal,” with many of the sessions focusing not just on Institute and Society initiatives but on personal and professional development. These sessions included training on delivering media interviews, improving presentation skills, and how to use mindfulness to improve health and job performance. It was a great combination of information and training for managing the local Society as well as improving my own professional skills.

During the plenary session on Friday morning I was able to participate in a debate on the future of the profession. Besides myself, the debate included Society leaders from New Zealand, France and South Africa. The moderator was from Turkey, making it a truly global panel. The exact motion we debated was “This house believes that the investment profession as we know it will be obsolete in 10 years.” I represented the opposition, arguing that the profession will not be obsolete at that time. We had a lot of fun during the debate and it was a highlight of the conference for many attendees. It definitely spurred lots of interesting conversation afterward.

Here is a summary of my argument. Despite the headlines of job losses in the industry, the flows from active to passive and the threat of artificial intelligence on analyst and research jobs, I believe that the investment profession’s core purposes of helping create wealth (by mobilizing capital to productive uses for future growth) and managing client savings, spending and financial risk through time will still be needed 10 years from now, and will still require human ingenuity and discernment.

The only risk is that if the profession isn’t trusted and transparent parts of the industry may be killed off by regulation, technology and disintermediation. But if we work together to align incentives between asset owners, asset managers, savers and beneficiaries the profession as we know it will be even stronger 10 years from now. We will continue to gain more tools than ever to fulfill our duties as investment professionals, tools we should embrace. And if we use those tools properly I expect that the demand for our services will only grow over time, not become obsolete, and will also help create a better society.

Have a differing view, or want to share your opinion on this motion? Please post a comment below. I look forward to reading your thoughts and ideas on the future of the investment profession.

Joshua M. Howard, CFA
President, CFA Society Minnesota

A Letter From Our Society President

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Joshua M. Howard, CFA

Society Members –

The CFA Society of Minnesota is fortunate to have more than 150 active volunteers that serve on our committees and help with individual events. This allows us to be innovative and try new things while still maintaining our popular events and programs. Although we currently have an abundance of energetic, thoughtful people on our Board of Directors and our committees, we must continually replenish our volunteer base. Every year we have 3-5 Board positions as long-time volunteers roll off the Board, and committees frequently have the need for new volunteers throughout the year.When we prepare for Board transition we look for new Board members and committee volunteers from a variety of industries – some even outside of finance, such as people with experience in human resources, marketing, accounting or law. We seek diversity in all aspects including, experience and viewpoints. We strive to represent the interests of the entire body of local members and of all occupations either directly or indirectly related to investment management. Many people do not realize that you do not have to be a charterholder to be on our Board or to volunteer with one of our committees. Event and committee volunteers technically do not even need to be local society members, though most choose to join once they start volunteering.

Our Nominating Committee for the upcoming fiscal year will begin their work in May, but it is not too early to put out the call for new volunteers. If you have an interest in joining our Board, assisting with a single event (such as the upcoming Intellisight Conference), or helping one of our committees (Employment, Membership and Advocacy have the biggest needs) please let me know and I will get you in touch with our staff or a committee chair. If you want to learn more about volunteering in general please send Diane Senjem or me an email and we can discuss the current opportunities. I guarantee we have a spot for any level of time commitment. If you know of someone who might be a good fit we also accept referrals.

To all our past, current and future volunteers, thank you so much for your contributions to the CFA Society of Minnesota.

Joshua M Howard, CFA
President, CFA Society of Minnesota

A Letter From Our Society President

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Joshua M. Howard, CFA

Society Members –

The Board of Directors of the CFA Society of Minnesota has spent the last few years diligently improving our strategic planning and governance processes. This commenced four years ago with a review and restatement of our mission and vision, followed by the creation of a new 3-5 year strategic plan. I have shared the outcomes of those activities with you in the past, and I will be sending a status update on the strategic plan sometime in May or June.

We are now working on the next step in the process to improve how the Board functions. The Executive Committee and full Board are in the midst of revising our bylaws, which haven’t been updated in many years. Some of the changes are non-material, such as updating our office location, but some changes will have material effects on Board processes and committee structures. We are undertaking this revision to make sure we are adopting best practices in governance, as well as to better align with our current mission, vision and staff structure.

In late spring, we will be sharing our proposed revisions of the bylaws with the full membership, as well as highlighting the material edits. Changes to bylaws require a 75% vote from our entire membership, a very high bar, so I strongly encourage everyone to take a minute to review the changes and provide any feedback before we put the bylaws out for a vote. When the proposed revisions are released to Society membership, please take time to vote yes or no. We have more than 1,300 members, which requires us to get consent from almost 1,000 members before the new bylaws can be approved.

The Board and staff have worked very hard on making sure your local Society is operating efficiently while still providing value-add programming and fellowship. We also care deeply about putting in place proper governance procedures along with the right amount of oversight of staff and Society finances. The bylaws revisions, which may seem modest at first glance, will help us be an even more effective organization in the future.

Josh Howard, CFA
President, CFA Society of Minnesota

P.S. Please take a few minutes today to log in and update your CFA Institute profile – especially your email address, which we’ll need for voting.