I HOPE YOU ARE ALL VERY WELL.

As a member-focused organization, CFA Society Toronto continually looks for ways that we can enhance our member value proposition and increase engagement. While our member retention rates exceed 92 percent, we know we need to keep engaging our members through digital interactions and in-person events to continue to build a community of like-minded individuals. This speaks to our broad theme of making and enhancing connections.

How do we do this successfully?

While attending numerous stakeholder meetings and events over the last few months, I heard from you that in-person and networking events were critical to increasing our connectivity with key stakeholders, one of our three strategic objectives. Here are just some of the highlights from the last few months as we have been working to ensure we deliver on this objective with measurable outcomes:

• Annual Investment Dinner – 763 attendees
• Annual General Meeting – 143 attendees
• Private Wealth Management Networking Reception – 57 attendees
• Membership Information Event – 100 attendees
• Annual Equity Symposium – 95 attendees
• Understanding Private Credit: A Strategy and Due Diligence Guide – a SOLD-OUT in-person afternoon session – 60 attendees

Through the strong leadership of Aaron Vale, Programming Chair, and Kar-Wei Lam, Programming Vice Chair, and in partnership with our talented Programming Committee Chairs, we will continue to look for innovative and unique in-person opportunities to deliver high-quality content, while providing many opportunities for you to connect with industry peers.

As part of this process, we are actively engaging our valued sponsors and other key stakeholders to understand their priorities and the macro environment and then ensure that we deliver relevant educational content in a variety of engaging formats.

We continue our successful post-secondary outreach, connecting CFA charterholders with the next generation of financial professionals through our awards programming and university outreach initiatives. We wish the local challenge champion student teams from the University of Waterloo and the University of Ottawa, Telfer School of Management, all the best in the upcoming Research and Ethics Challenges finals this May! 

I encourage all of you to drop by our offices, catch up with your colleagues in our member lounge, and attend one of our in-person events. In that way, you can assist us in making and enhancing connections and in building the CFA Society Toronto community. 

All the very best,
Fred