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Your point about less weighting of the final exam is made as both a con and a pro (not logically consistent).

The issue of less flexibility to alter the curriculum is not purely a con, can be a pro. I know this will raise hackles of community of instructors here who enjoy flexibility and see themselves as Robin Williams in Dead Poets. But there can be a real benefit from the student point of view and from the customer (school, military, employer, government) point of view in making sure that specific things are covered. (You don't see the bar or PE exam as instructor-specific!) And teachers may vary in how they lag, accelerate, or even push their own research (that feature can be a bug!)

Another benefit can be motivational. Jaime Escalante has written about this. He was in it together with his kids to beat the tests (hopefully not by cheating). And the presence of an external, seriously designed exam was very motivational because it was a somewhat objective bar to clear.

It's not just the bell curve--you can do much more serious psychometrics when you have large test populations taking thoughtful independently designed tests (not ad hoc by individual profs for individual sections). Can do things like cross year comparisons. Can really try to estimate what it means to have "A", "B", etc. knowledge of the subject (for example what level/frequency of problem solving). I.e. trying to set a bar, not just bell curve the kids. See point 5 also, however.

I don't think this is convenient for most single instructor courses. (I.e. not for majors courses or random humanities electives). But it does make a lot of sense when you have a lot of different sections taking the same thing. Consider the AP exams, for instance. Or at military academies, there were many required courses (non majors) that had essentially the entire class taking them, but in separate sections of ~30 students (like high school). So if you have 35 sections (say 15-20 instructors), than that is no big deal to have one of them (or a separate person) design the exams (not just the final or midterm, but intermediate exams, every 4 weeks in a 16 week semester). Examples of this would be general chemistry (2 sems), physics (2 sems), calc 1-3, ODEs, EE (2 sems), world history (2 sems), naval history, CS, all the prodev courses (navigation, leadership, etc.). Also many of the engineering courses that all engineers take (statics, "engine math", etc.) before going into major specifics.