CFA along with FRM

Hi All

Following up with your questions on FRM and related stuff-- I came across this general query about appearing for CFA along with FRM and all -- 

The fact of the matter is that in initial stages of your career in Finance, you hover around trying to find the exact place you would want to build your career in Finance. I mean, there are literally hundreds on different fields and professions within Finance and one normally spens a lot of time to figure out the field of his liking. Now FRM and CFA have different purposes and objectives. One appears for FRM to enter risk management, quantitative jobs, credit risk, market risk related jobs. CFA( so to speak) is oriented more towards Asset management, equity research and investment management jobs. One thing about CFA is that it matters only when yoy complete atleast 2 levels. Ideally you should go through all the three levels to get a materialistic gain. On the other hand, FRM ha sjust one level and hence is a little more challenging , if you compare it woth CFA levels individually. In starting stages of one's career, I feel that it doesn't really matter whether you are FRM or CFA ( when you are applying for entry level jobs). 

Front end jobs in Finance would value your experience more than anything. I mean, relevant experience carries more weightage than anything else. Say for example, a person with 3 years of equity research experience is significantly better than any FRM or CFA guy, ofcourse provided that the company has a descent reputation. If anyone wants to enter capital markets and say wanna become a trader, than relevant experience is a huge plus than any degree whatsoever. 

To sumamrize, I believe that in starting stages of your career, one can take either route to get that first break. After that , one automatically figures out his/ her own way. One more point is that all these certifications exams get refunded once you enter a relevant job, so if one has any plans of post graduation from abroad, then ideally it would make much more sense to appear for these cartifications once to get a fin job. But ofcourse, there is no one single way. People in investment banking enter from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures.  One thing that I am preety sure about is "Networking". The bigger network of friends and seniors you have in these companies , the better it is. Around 60-80 % of the jobs are filled with referrals. So one should always strive to have a network of alumnis and friends to be aware of job openings...

Keep asking your doubts and quesries and I am sure now I will reply back to them as quickly as I can..

Cheers

BG

Which companies would recruit you if you are FRM?

Hi All

I apologise for not being able to reply to your comments as I was stuck up at my new job. This post is in reply to questions asked by Vijit from IIT Roorkee. I have decided to answer it by writing a new post and I will answer them in parts.

'Will companies recruit me if I clear FRM, even though I am from a non-finance background and have not done MBA'.

The simple and plain answer to this is "YES". I am a 2007 batch graduate in Mechanical Engg from IIT Roorkee. I first joined GE, combustion team, which involved designing and work heavily oriented towards mechanical engg. I passed FRM in 2007 and got next job in HSBC as Analyst in Consumer & Mortgage Lending. Now I have joined Deutsche Bank as Analyst in Mumbai. As I mentioned earlier, I am not a MBA and there are many people like me who are working in all these banks..

Let me first clear out the myth about working for a "Finance" firm. In most of the banks, when an engineer is hired , most of the times he gets involved in "Glorified Coding". I mean you analyse big datasets and churn out the final numbers and then try to make a business sense to it. By no means I intend to say that its a useless job but the fact is that, in most of these places no one expects you to know anything about finance at all, as far as analyst level is concerned . If you know, it helps , but even if you don't - IT's FINE... I can tell you from my experience that the real learning, especially in Finance, occurs only when you work in a related office. These degrees like MFE, MBA, FRM , CFA , is about adding credentials on your resume, networking and making a strong point that " YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT".

After FRM, you stand a strong chance of working in a risk analytics division of a bank. So companies like, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC should be your targets. Like in DB, we have a strong risk management team , and we work extensively with options, swaps, CDS, CDO's and other derivatives...

I would be writing other posts very soon and will answer any more follow up questions you may have from your side.

BG