CFA Society France

CFA Society France has separate membership categories for charterholders, experienced professionals, early-career associates and candidates. CFA charterholders join through CFA Institute and are the only members who may use the CFA designation and vote in the society. Professional membership is meant for experienced investment professionals without the charter, associate membership for people at the start of their careers, and both cost 80 US dollars a year as local-only memberships without voting rights.

A board of nine directors governs the association, and its members elect the directors for two years at the annual general meeting. In the 2025-2026 financial year, 223 members voted at the annual general meeting and 161 at an extraordinary general meeting, the highest participation in the history of the society.

CFA Society France organized 50 events in the 2025-2026 financial year, ten of them with more than 100 attendees, and nine webinars for members outside Paris. The fourth edition of its Sustainability Conference had the theme "The Long Term at the Heart of the Economic Model", and an advocacy conference on private equity with CFA Institute drew 100 attendees. FactSet, BlackFin Capital Partners and Amiral Gestion host many of the events in their offices.

The Investment Conference brings panels on asset allocation, securities lending, convertible bonds and new sources of yield beyond conventional fixed income. One of its panels covers tokenization and on-chain asset management and what both mean in practice for asset managers. A separate conference on climate risk looks at how banks, asset managers and insurers assess and manage these risks.

The Alternatives subcommittee of CFA Society France held three events on digital assets during the same year. The joint event "Stablecoins: The New Digital Cash?" with the CAIA Association and GARP discussed the risks for issuers and investors and the implementation of the European MiCA regulation. The speakers also compared consortium and single-issuer models and the relation between stablecoins and tokenized money market funds.

Two further sessions sponsored by Bitwise covered how French investors can access crypto assets and how the US GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act could affect the market. The Technology & Innovation committee, chaired by Eric Thien, organizes events on automation, AI and data science and on blockchain and crypto technologies. Together with CFA Institute, the society also held an AI industry roundtable with senior representatives of AXA, BNP Paribas Asset Management, Amundi and Eurazeo.

Boubakar Kaboré, a senior portfolio manager at Amundi, was president of the board for three years and ended his term with the annual report for the 2025-2026 financial year. In that year Sarah Duparc was vice president, Nikolai Doinikov general secretary and Franck Heripel treasurer. Pierre Bismuth, Roxana Mitroi, Mourad Kamoun, Gabriel Houette and Matthieu Savi were the further directors, all of them CFA charterholders.

Alejandro Hiniesto leads the permanent staff as executive director, after five years in fintech and more than 15 years in asset management, mostly at JP Morgan and BNP Paribas Asset Management. Sonia Allam manages operations and events, and 105 volunteers support the staff in committees for advocacy, communication, sustainability, technology and candidates.

The CFA Program of CFA Institute had 2,711 candidates in France in that financial year, nine percent more than the year before, with the strongest growth at Level I. CFA Society France supports them with scholarships, mock exams and a "Last Tips" meeting before the exams. At the Charter Award Ceremony, 122 new charterholders received their charter.

At Level III, 60 percent of the candidates in France chose the portfolio management pathway, 35 percent chose private markets and five percent chose private wealth. The share of private markets rose from 28 percent in the previous year.

The twentieth French round of the CFA Institute Research Challenge set a record with 39 university teams and more than 150 students. The teams analyzed the defense group Thales and handed in 28 complete equity research reports, and the team from IAE Paris won the national final.

The European Quant Awards are a competition for university students in quantitative finance that CFA Society France runs with the CFA societies of Belgium, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain. Students from 29 universities took part in the eleventh edition, and the three best papers win 3,000, 2,000 and 1,000 euros.

With its Media Awards, CFA Society France honors French-language articles and podcasts on corporate finance, investment products, stock markets, regulation and ESG. The tenth edition received 36 submissions, and anonymized entries are judged on teaching quality, relevance, a fresh angle and verified evidence. The 2026 prizes went among others to the magazine Le Particulier, to Julien Marion of BFM Bourse and to the Finscale podcast of Solenne Niedercorn-Desouches.

The office of CFA Society France is at 2 rue Alasseur in 75015 Paris, in the 15th arrondissement of the city. Members and candidates reach the staff through the contact form, while customer support of CFA Institute answers questions on memberships, the CFA Program and courses.