CFA Course: Chartered Financial Analyst is a globally recognized designation for the professionals who deal with investments. Investment is a significant part of the financial sector and has gained popularity in recent years. People are becoming more intelligent while coping with their savings and are interested in the investment of their savings in different sectors to get a better return. This is when a CFA comes into play to help people invest their money in sectors offering higher yields.
CFA is a professional certificate in financial management and investment. This certificate is offered by the CFA Institute. CFA is considered as one of the most respected courses in the whole world. This course improves and develops the investment knowledge of a candidate and makes a candidate expert in investment analysis. The requirement of CFA has increased in companies with an increase in globalization and industrialization.
In order to get a CFA certificate, a candidate is required to qualify three levels of exams conducted by the CFA Institute. The candidates who get this certificate are known as charter holders.
This course is meant for those candidates who want to pursue their careers in banking, corporate, or financial services.
Importance of CFA Course
The demand for a charter holder has increased with the increase in globalization and industrialization globally. Companies prefer to pay high salaries to the CFA’s to make use of their expertise in different financial decisions of the company. The course has become one of the most recognized and respected courses globally.
Top investment firms dealing with portfolio management, financial modeling, and other investment activities seek to hire charter holders to ensure efficient working of different departments of their firm.
This course doesn’t only improve the skills of investment banking and equity research but also helps the candidates to gain knowledge in different financial fields. This course develops a candidate’s decision-making skills that allow the candidate to make decisions after properly analyzing different variables.
This is a better option for candidates who don’t have time to pursue a full-time MBA Finance course.
Skills Required for CFA Course
In order to get success in a particular career, you need to have some skills. Candidates lacking the required skills for a specific course can find it difficult to qualify the course. Similarly, in the case of CFA course, candidates need to have the following skills:
- Time management – A candidate is required to have proper time management skills. As CFA is a hard course, candidates have to spend a lot of time studying different subjects, so they need to manage this with a proper plan to give equal time to each subject.
- Decision Making – A candidate should have the ability to make quick decisions in different situations. The candidate must be quick to evaluate and analyze a particular situation before making any decision.
- Focus – A candidate pursuing his/her career in this field should be focused all the time, and the only aim they should have is to achieve that CFA certificate any deviation from this path can cause problems.
- Communication Skills – Candidate thinking of pursuing a career in this field should be an excellent communicator so that he/she can present their analysis accurately without confusing the audience and creating misconceptions in their minds.
CFA Course Levels
Candidates to qualify for getting a CFA certificate and become a charter holder have to pass in three CFA levels exams conducted by the CFA Institute. After passing all three exams, the candidate will become eligible to get a CFA certificate. Let’s discuss these three levels exams in brief:
CFA Level I
This is the first exam that a candidate has to qualify in his way of becoming a charter holder. This is the only exam in the three levels, which is conducted four times a year. The level I exams evaluates the knowledge and comprehension of a candidate. The level I exams helps the candidates to recall previous formulas and definitions. In level I, candidates also get to know a little about the subjects they are going to cover in level II and level III.
The level I exam consists of 240 multiple-choice questions. Each question is unique from the other. This level covers a total of 19 study sessions, 57 readings, and 10 topics. In level I, the pass percentage is the lowest as compared to the other two levels.
CFA Level II
This is the second step a candidate has to cross in order to achieve his goal of getting a CFA certificate. This level exams are conducted twice a year by the CFA Institute. This exam evaluates the application and analysis skills of a candidate. The level II exam has organized the questions as 20 “item sets” based upon a shared situation called a vignette. Each vignette describes a business scenario with its financial statements, and a candidate needs to study these vignettes quickly and answer the questions.
The candidate must show his ability to apply tools and relationships while analyzing financial data.
The level II exams cover a total of 14 study sessions and 48 readings. Level II exam has a better pass rate than the level I, the pass rate of level II ranges between 42 percent to 45 percent.
CFA Level III
This is the last hurdle that the candidate has to cross to get the CFA certificate and become a charter holder. This exam demands the candidates to show the same skills as in level II as well as skills in making judgment calls. The level III CFA exams question paper is divided into 8-12 constructed response questions and 10 vignettes, with each vignette having 4-6 multiple-choice questions.
The level III exam has a total number of 16 study sessions, 38 readings, and 7 topics. The questions in this exam are complicated as each question is made from the concepts of different subjects. The pass rate at this level is the highest as compared to the other levels, and the pass rate is over 50 percent at this level.
CFA Course Duration
A candidate can complete the CFA course and obtain his/her CFA certificate in at least two years. But it doesn’t mean that candidates who cannot complete the course in two years can never obtain the certificate. Candidates can take more than two years to complete this course.
CFA Course Eligibility Criteria
Candidates willing to pursue their careers in the CFA course are required to qualify specific eligibility criteria. Those candidates who are not able to qualify these criteria are restricted from pursuing this course. The eligibility criteria are as follows:
- The candidate must have a bachelor’s degree or any equivalent degree in any stream from a recognized university.
- Candidates those are in their final year of bachelor’s degree can also apply for CFA course.
- Candidates are required to have four years of working experience in order to apply for the CFA course.
Candidates need to pass each level exams in order to qualify for giving the exams of the next level.
CFA Course Fee Structure
The average fee for pursuing a CFA course comes in between the range of Rs 2 lakhs to Rs 2.2 lakhs. Despite this expenditure, a candidate has to take tuitions in order to qualify the three levels of CFA. So the total amount a candidate needs to pursue a career in CFA will come around Rs 6 lakhs but not more than that.
Salary of Chartered Financial Assistant Professional
CFA course is a difficult choice for a career as it is a complicated course and requires a lot of hard work to qualify for the certificate, but candidates who are charter holders get a lump sum amount of salary.
In CFA, the salary depends upon the experience a candidate has in terms of years. A candidate with 5 – 9 years of experience gets a compensation of around Rs 850000, whereas a candidate with experience of 10 – 19 years can get an approximate salary of Rs 2000000. More experienced candidates can earn more as compared to less experienced.
FAQ’s on CFA Course
Question 1.
Is CFA harder than CA?
Answer:
Likewise, CA, CFA is also divided into three levels of exams, but in the case of CFA, the candidate needs to have a work experience of a minimum of four years. Both the courses are the same to some extent, but in terms of difficulty, CA is harder than CFA because the pass percentage of CA is 0.5%, whereas the pass percentage of CFA is way more than that.
Question 2.
Is CFA better than an MBA?
Answer:
A candidate pursuing an MBA has to spend a lot more money than the candidate who is pursuing CFA. In terms of salary, it depends on which college the candidate is pursuing his/her MBA because a good institute MBA pass out can earn way more than a charter holder.
Question 3.
Is CFA worth in India?
Answer:
CFA is one of the most recognized and respected courses worldwide, so, in India, a candidate can start his/her financial career with a CFA course without any doubts. CFA is a great career to choose for those who are interested in investment and other related financial services