Some students who took the CFA exam earlier this month have had an early lesson in how unpredictable the world of finance can be.
A truck carrying CFA exam answer sheets has been hijacked in Rio Di Janeiro and its entire cargo stolen, reports Bloomberg. Brazilian police have said that the chances of recovery of the answer sheets is slim. It’s estimated that the truck contained 140 answer sheets of students who’d taken the prestigious test in Rio.
The CFA exams are conducted all across the world in June and December, and finance professionals vie amongst each other to earn the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. The exam is spread over three levels, and candidates who qualify a level are eligible to move on to the next. Competition for the exams is fierce. As many as 1,37,000 candidates had appeared for the exams last year, and pass rates were low — only 30-40% of candidates typically pass a level. The cost of failure is high too — each test costs around $1000 (Rs. 65,000) to take, and the CFA Institute recommends that candidates spend 300 hours preparing for each level.
But all of it can come to naught if your answer sheets are hijacked and stolen before they’re evaluated. The CFA Institute, though, has offered affected candidates a full refund if they so choose. The Institute is also giving affected candidates the opportunity to retake the test in January or June, and says it will speed up the scoring process, which usually takes a couple of months.
“I’m very sorry that this happened in Brazil,” said Mauro Miranda, the president of CFA Society Brazil”This was the first time the test was offered at the new test center, which will remain in use.” India, too, has several centers for the exam, including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The test has become enormously popular in India over the last few years, with the third highest number of test takers coming from the country.