Private Wealth Pathway: CFA® Level III

It is 30–35% of the 2027 Level III exam. 27 learning outcomes across 7 learning modules.

36 practice questions and 6 formula cards on this topic in the app.

The Private Wealth Management Industry

• Explain how firms serving private clients are organised to make money and how they tailor their offer to different client segments
• Set out the common ways private wealth firms charge clients, earn revenue and pay their advisers
• Explain the part played by outside specialists and advisers in helping wealth managers serve their clients
• Explain and assess the regulatory and compliance requirements that shape how private wealth firms operate

Working With the Wealthy

• Explain how relationships, emotions and family systems interact with wealth and the way it is managed
• Explain the abilities an adviser needs to win, understand, counsel, inform and teach private clients
• Explain what sets ultra-high-net-worth clients apart from other private wealth clients
• Propose how a family should create, put into practice, observe and revise a shared long-term structure for making decisions together

Wealth Planning

• Build a plan around an individual's specific goals and propose ways of meeting them
• Propose, and defend, ways to handle a family's financial risks as a whole through working life and into retirement
• Assess how tax principles and tax costs affect goal-based and whole-of-family financial plans for individuals
• Propose liquidity arrangements suited to goal-based and comprehensive financial plans

Investment Planning

• Propose, and defend, an asset allocation and investment choices for a private client
• Explain how tax-efficient different asset classes tend to be and propose tax-management techniques for allocating assets
• Explain and propose retirement wealth planning that takes account of legal, tax and cross-border issues
• Judge whether a private client's investment programme is working, using performance reports and periodic reviews

Preserving the Wealth

• Analyse the different risks that can threaten a person's human capital
• Explain and propose ways to protect human capital against the risks it faces
• Propose planning and investment measures to protect a client's purchasing power from being eroded by inflation
• Explain how currency movements affect asset allocation and planning, and set out techniques for limiting currency risk

Advising the Wealthy

• Explain and propose suitable choices about citizenship, nationality and legal residence for private clients
• Explain and propose wealth management approaches that make the most of the human and financial capital, and so the economic net worth, of families in complex circumstances
• Explain and propose approaches for entrepreneurs and business owners that build their human and financial capital and their economic net worth
• Explain and propose approaches for professionals, corporate executives and similar clients that build their human and financial capital and their economic net worth

Transferring the Wealth

• Explain and propose planning for passing wealth to others by lifetime gifts
• Explain and propose planning for passing wealth on at death by will and by inheritance
• Explain and propose planning for keeping wealth intact over several generations through philanthropy and charitable giving