Are you considering CAIA certification?
We often get asked how difficult the CAIA exams actually are. While CAIA pass rates and its historical trend is one way to judge this, it can be tricky to compare difficulty between designations such as CAIA vs CFA as well.
CAIA exams are tough in the sense that you’ll build up deep, specialist knowledge in a narrow topic of alternative investments. Passing CAIA exams is certainly achievable with a proper study plan to track your progress and solid study strategies.
In this article, we try to approach this question on exam difficulty objectively in order to help you decide whether CAIA exam is right for you. We will look at:
- historical CAIA pass rates,
- third party benchmarking studies, and
- speed of exam completion.
Let’s go!
CAIA pass rates since 2010
Here are the latest CAIA pass rates:
| Pass rates | CAIA Level 1 | CAIA Level 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2024 | 45% | 60% |
| Mar 2024 | 46% | 59% |
| Sep 2023 | 48% | 65% |
| Mar 2023 | 45% | 61% |
| Sep 2022 | 49% | 57% |
| Mar 2022 | 49% | 58% |
| Sep 2021 | 51% | 58% |
| Mar 2021 | 54% | 59% |
| Sep 2020 | 52% | 65% |
| Mar 2020 | 54% | 81% |
Since 2017, the historical CAIA pass rates for:
- Level 1 ranges from 45%-64%, with a 7-year average of 51%;
- Level 2 ranges from 57%-81%, with a 7-year average of 63%.
Interestingly, pass rates for both CAIA levels are more volatile compared to CFA’s or FRM’s, even when comparing like-for-like periods.
CAIA Level 1 pass rates
With a 7 year average of 51%, CAIA Level 1 pass rates have been on a downward trajectory since 2006, with the pass rates dropping from 70%+ to 45% today.
The latest CAIA Level 1 pass rates is 45% (Sep2024). This recent Level 1 pass rate is one of the lowest since 2010. This is probably due to a combination of an increase in candidate intake, more challenging exams and/or lack of study preparation.
More candidates are taking the exam than previously, which is one reason the pass rate is declining, but the other is that the exam is becoming more challenging.
Interestingly, unlike CFA exams, the pandemic didn’t have a noticeable improvement in CAIA pass rates, due to additional study time that comes with the postponement.
This is likely due to CAIA exam’s existing computer-based testing (CBT) format, and also the introduction of online proctoring option for candidates since Sep 2020, both which provided more testing flexibility and minimized any exam postponements. That said, CAIA is now offering online proctoring on a needs only basis from 2024.
CAIA Level 2 pass rates
The story is quite different for CAIA Level 2 pass rates. The latest CAIA Level 2 pass rate is 60% for March 2024’s exam.
With a 15-year average of 63%, CAIA Level 2 pass rates have been ranging between 56% to 70% since 2006, with March 2020 being an outlier.
CAIA Level 2’s pass rate for March 2020 is the highest ever at 81% (!), possibly attributed to a sizeable portion of CAIA Level 2 candidates being CFA charterholders who are utilizing the first trials of Stackable Pilot program to waive CAIA Level 1.
Since 2022, the L2 CAIA pass rate has been on an upward trend closer to the long term average.
How hard is CAIA exam, really?
So we have learned all the historical trends in CAIA pass rates for both levels, but that still doesn’t really tell us how difficult these exams are.
Perhaps a more objective way to assess CAIA exam’s difficulty lies in the UK NARIC’s (National Academic Recognition Information Centre of the United Kingdom) benchmarks.
Unfortunately at this stage, CAIA exams have not been officially benchmarked by UK NARIC as yet, although CAIA Association has told us that this is in their plans.
The chart above shows that completing CFA Level 3 or FRM exams has a difficulty comparable to a Master’s degree (Level 7 qualification under UK Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF)).
Just to be helpful to our readers, based on our understanding of CAIA’s curriculum, if we had to guess (big caveat here!), we would expect CAIA exams to be somewhere between Level 5-7 under the UK Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF).
This means that we estimate that CAIA exam’s difficulty should be comparable to either a Diploma, Bachelor’s degree or Master’s degree equivalent under UK NARIC’s benchmarking system.
Finally, here’s another useful metric as a gauge of CAIA exam’s difficulty by CAIA Association themselves:
75% of CAIA candidates who earn their CAIA Charter do so in 12-18 months.
CAIA Association
In contrast, CFA candidates take 4 years on average to pass 3 levels of the CFA exams, and is a Masters equivalent degree.
Hope you found the CAIA pass rates information and various data benchmarks above useful!
Meanwhile, here are some related articles that may be of interest:
Is it true that to pass the CAIA level II exam one needs to score minimum 70% on the exam?
Aiming for 70%+ would be a safe target mock score, however the actual MPS fluctuates year on year given the grading methodology, which if I have to guess would be between 60-65%.
Hi Sophie, how confident are you about the 60-65% MPS for CAIA Level II ?
This is was some claim, in reality as of 2022 I believe it’s 80% for some years from what I heard from someone internally working at CAIA.