A portfolio manager hands in her resignation on Monday, tells four clients on Tuesday where she is going, and starts at the new firm on the fifteenth. Two of those three acts are fine. One is a violation, and the timing is everything.
Standard IV covers three obligations owed to the firm that employs you: loyalty, disclosure of outside pay, and supervision of the people below you.
In matters related to their employment, members and candidates must act for the benefit of their employer, and must not deprive the employer of the advantage of their skills and abilities, divulge confidential information, or otherwise cause harm. Implicit in this is a duty to follow employer policies governing the employment relationship, unless those policies conflict with law or with the Code and Standards.
The standard is narrower than candidates assume. It does not require you to place employer interests ahead of personal interests in all matters, and it does not require you to subordinate important personal and family obligations.
Common mistakes
- Treating resignation as the finish line. The duty runs until pay and responsibilities stop. Soliciting during a four-week notice period is a violation.
- Assuming self-authored work is portable. Models and spreadsheets built on firm time with firm resources are firm property; the unpaid intern who copies software she helped write still violates the standard.
- Believing client benefit excuses solicitation. Disparaging your firm to a client and steering her to your next employer violates Standard IV(A) even when the firm's practices are genuinely unethical.
Bottom line
- Loyalty: act for the employer's benefit; the duty ends when pay and responsibilities end, not at the resignation letter
- Permitted before departure: preparing to compete, registering an entity on personal time, and after notice, naming the new firm per firm policy
- Prohibited before departure: soliciting clients or prospects, taking records or models, disparaging the firm, promoting the new employer
- After departure: skills, experience, and client names are not confidential; public information may be used absent a non-solicitation agreement
Exam shortcut
Date the conduct first. Draw a line at the last paid day, put every act on one side, and most Standard IV(A) items resolve instantly. Before the line, solicitation, records, and disparagement are violations; after the line, public-information contact is clean unless a signed agreement says otherwise. For IV(B), ask one question: did anything of value flow from someone other than the employer, and was there documented consent?
The full lesson (about 2,166 words, 14 min read) adds 2 worked examples, all 6 common mistakes, a self-check, free in the app.
Learning objectives
- standard IV duties to employers
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