Deck cleared, CFA Institute to expand in India

As the nearly six-year-long battle between the US-based Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has ended, the former plans to expand in India.

In an email statement to Business Standard, the institute said, “With the AICTE case behind us, we will explore more partnership and collaborations with universities and business schools in India. More than 200 scholarships a year will be offered in India.”

At a hearing on April 17, AICTE declared that its executive committee had concluded that the existing AICTE Regulations do not apply to the CFA Programme.

This means CFA Institute can offer Indian test centres the same advanced schedule, and with the same certainty, as its other test centres worldwide. There were more than 20,400 exam registrations in India in 2011.

In 1997, it filed a case against Hyderabad-based Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI), which had launched its certification programme for financial analysts in 1985, over the use of CFA in its name.

In August 2006, the Delhi High Court issued an interim injunction asking ICFAI to drop the word CFA from its name by the end of May 2007.

In March 2007, ICFAI filed a petition in Gauhati High Court alleging AICTE and the University Grant’s Commission were not taking any action against the CFA institute for allegedly running "an unapproved technical programme in India”. The Gauhati HC directed AICTE to look into the matter, following which AICTE issued a regulation notice to CFA institute, asking it to cease operations with immediate effect.