There was definite overlap between CFA and CAIA. Without saying too much, I don’t think I would have gotten one of the essays without the CFA background as it was a fairly minor LOS in the CAIA curriculm.
Specifically between CFA L3 and CAIA L2, I didn’t notice a lot of overlap. The biggest overlaps come from the CFA L2 with the MBS, CMO, and structured products. You also learn about binomial trees in CFA L2. Obviously ethics overlaps directly. Though the CFA ethics are much more tricky.
CAIA L1 I thought was too easy, I thought they tried to make harder by making you memorize all of those stats on skew etc that really isn’t anything other than rote memorization. CAIA L2 I thought was easier than CFA L2 and L3 (but not by much) and definitely harder than CFA L1. I thought they made CAIA L2 easier than it could have been, which is why I said overall it was pretty fair.