Standard V has three parts and governs the quality and integrity of your actual analytical work product.
What do V(A) diligence and V(B) communication require?
V(A) Diligence and Reasonable Basis. You must exercise diligence and have a reasonable and adequate basis, supported by appropriate research, for any analysis, recommendation, or action. You may rely on the work of others, but only after conducting reasonable due diligence into the quality of that work; adopting a third party's conclusion (a discount rate, a growth estimate, a rating) without sanity-checking its key assumption is not "relying on others," it is skipping your own diligence and borrowing someone else's, sight unseen.
V(B) Communication with Clients and Prospective Clients. You must distinguish between fact and opinion in your communications, disclose the basic characteristics of your investment process (and any material change to it), and use reasonable judgment in identifying which factors are important to a specific recommendation. A firm that quietly changes its actual investment strategy while continuing to send clients a boilerplate letter describing the old process has violated this Standard the moment the letter goes out unchanged.
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What did the 2024 revision add to V(B)?
The 2024 revision added a second half to V(B) that is easy to miss because it has nothing to do with process. Members and candidates must disclose the nature of the services they provide and information about the costs to the client associated with those services, at the outset of the relationship, in plain language and prominently (check the current wording at cfainstitute.org before relying on it in a real deliverable). Specific amounts are not required. A fee schedule expressed as a basis-point range on assets, with the other charges the client will actually meet named alongside it, satisfies the duty; a single number to four decimal places is not what the Standard is asking for.
Three words in that sentence carry the whole burden. Outset means before the client is committed, not in the first quarterly statement. A cost disclosure that arrives after the decision has been made cannot inform it. Plain language means the client's language rather than the firm's: "we are paid a share of your gains above a threshold, and you also pay the fund's own operating costs" beats "performance participation subject to a hurdle, plus vehicle-level expenses", though both are accurate. Prominently means the disclosure sits where a reasonable client would meet it, which rules out the third page of an appendix in six-point type.
Read the two halves as one duty about what the client is buying. The old half is about the service: how the money will be managed, and what changed when it changes. The new half is about the price and the shape of what is being bought: which services are included, which are billed separately, and roughly what any of it costs. A firm can now fail V(B) while describing its process impeccably, and that is the discrimination the practice set drills. If a vignette hands you an immaculate process description and stays silent about how the firm is paid, resist the pull toward "not a violation" and check the second half.
One boundary is worth stating so the Standard does not swallow its neighbours. V(B) governs the disclosure of what you charge; it does not make any particular fee level a violation, and a fee that is disclosed at the outset, in plain language, prominently, is compliant even if a competitor charges half. Where the fee itself creates a conflict that could color a recommendation, VI(A) is the Standard doing that work, not V(B).
What does V(C) say about record retention?
V(C) Record Retention. You must maintain records supporting your analysis, recommendations, and communications. CFA Institute guidance recommends a minimum retention period of seven years, absent a longer requirement under applicable law, regulation, or firm policy, always confirm the current guidance and any longer local-law floor before relying on the seven-year figure in a real deliverable. The records exist so that you, or a regulator, or a court, can reconstruct, years later, exactly what basis a recommendation actually had.