Well, I'm a market risk manager and my work experience is approved by CFAI. I kinda classified it as a part of protfolio management. They will ask you to describe your work, and don't forget to mention how risk management (your analytics) will help in the investment decision making process. This is what they are looking for, I think.

Re: The difficulty (breadth of the material as well as the analytical rigour of the exam questions) has increased in my opinion.This is a difficult issue to debate as probably only a long-term CFAI insider could say definitively. I would have to dig out the CFA materials from my exams in 1987-1990, but my sense is that the exams had been more essay question oriented. Subsequently, the number of multiple choice questions was increased at the expense of essays to lighten the burden on exam scorers...and perhaps the understandably more English-language challenged international CFA applicants...now it looks like they are raising the bar again...perhaps after CFAs complained of the surge in CFAs and the percieved dilution of quality of the designation...