|
Speaking to Miia Hukari, CFA, President, CFA Society Finland, it is clear that size does not matter to this Society. With less than 150 members, the Society punches above its weight in terms of organising events, increasing member value, delivering a comprehensive approach to stakeholder outreach, building brand, and governance.
|
Increasing member value through relevant events
CFA Society Finland hosts around 20 events each year, which help to raise the profile of the Society locally.
“We have had an active board for several years that has strived to increase member value and organise educational events that attract a wider audience. It is a lot of work and very time consuming but we have seen our member base grow and local stakeholders have a greater knowledge of the Society,” explained Miia.
By partnering with other organisations, CFA Society Finland has increased attendance at its events. Miia explained: “We used to have around 30-40 attendees at our educational events, and in the recent Sustainability Seminar we had a hundred. Partnerships have given us better visibility locally and broadened our guest base. Our aim is to seek more partnerships in the future.”
The Sustainability Seminar in June 2019 was hosted in partnership with the Finland Sustainable Investment Forum (a Finnish organisation that promotes sustainable investing) and Demos Helsinki (an independent think tank). The event discussed how EU sustainable finance regulation can make a difference and featured experts representing stakeholders from the private and public sectors. In September 2018, the Society organised a panel discussion in partnership with Aalto University on “The Future of Capital Markets in the European Union”. The event featured high profile speakers, including the Governor of the Bank of Finland and a Member of the European Parliament.
Read more
This year, the Society has also experimented with organising smaller scale workshops, which have focused on more in-depth topics. One recent event featured a speaker from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts who helped attendees to improve their executive presence.
Annually, the Society also hosts networking events: Oktoberfest in October, a Christmas party in December, a Summer Kick-Off event in June, and a candidate networking event, which encourages attendees to discuss exam related questions and form study groups.
Strengthening stakeholder outreach
CFA Society Finland delivers a comprehensive approach to stakeholder outreach. In particular, the Society wants to strengthen its relationships with universities and asset management companies.
Read more
By hosting the CFA Institute Research Challenge in Finland, the Society is able to develop relationships with universities, increase universities’ knowledge of the CFA charter and attract more candidates to the CFA Program. Six Finnish universities participated in 2018-2019 challenge and the winners from the University of Turku were delighted to have the opportunity to compete in the EMEA Regional Final in Zurich.
One way CFA Society Finland builds partnerships with asset managers, asset owners and other entities in the financial industry is by running ethical decision-making workshops. These have been hosted by Sonia Gandhi, CFA, Director, Ethics Education & Professional Standards, CFA Institute, and Mikko Niskanen, CFA, local volunteer and ethics trainer.
The Society finds the workshops are a good way to get a foot-in-the-door with asset management companies. Miia commented:
"The workshops are a win-win: We want to promote ethics in the investment industry and companies need to ensure they are following regulation requirements and Code of Conduct policies. The workshops receive extremely good feedback from participants and are considered important, useful and fun.”
CFA Society Finland has also organised an ethics workshop for its university affiliate member, Aalto University, and has agreed to provide the ethics education required for the affiliate program. This provides the Society with the opportunity to increase students’ knowledge of the CFA Program and it plans to roll out this offering to other university affiliates too.
Building brand
The EMEA Society Leadership Conference took place in Helsinki in October 2018. CFA Society Finland used this opportunity to build brand locally and in conjunction with the conference, launched a “Let’s Measure Up” (or “On aika ryhdistäytyä” in Finnish) social media campaign. The campaign was supported by Society Brand Activation funding and garnered a lot of interest, with over 12,000 views of the LinkedIn advertisement and over 160,000 impressions on Twitter (the number of times a tweet appears in a Twitter user’s timeline).
Read more
Through its program of events and social media activity, CFA Society Finland has successfully increased its brand recognition locally. Miia said:
“Recently, we have found it easier to get leaders of the Finnish investment community to speak at our events and this has the additional benefit of attracting a broader audience.”
However, the Society would like to take this to the next level and recently built a communications strategy in partnership with CFA Institute (using Project Funding) and local advisory firm, Miltton Group. Miia said:
“We want to be a heavier partner in the industry and need to increase our presence in local media and on social media. Now we have developed a communications strategy, we need to move to the next phase: Implementation. We are, therefore, looking to hire a part-time Communication and Office Manager to help deliver this using Operational Funding."
Succession planning
CFA Society Finland puts a lot of focus on succession planning. With a growing membership base (its members grow around 10% annually), good corporate governance is essential to ensure the Society can continue to provide excellent member value.
Miia concluded by emphasising the importance of joining forces with the other Nordic CFA Societies: CFA Society Denmark, CFA Society Norway and CFA Society Sweden. Indeed, the Societies will be launching the Nordic Investment Conference on 19 September in Denmark. By working together they can further strengthen their impact in the region, and with the ambition shown by CFA Society Finland in its local events, we anticipate this regional event will go from strength-to-strength!
© 2019 CFA Institute. All rights reserved.
To download assets, please view the site on a desktop device