I wonder what the NPV is if you include the yearly fees for all those designations.
You mean they don’t have exponential benefit?
In order to be fair—
Less difficult doesn’t necessarily mean less useful. I think CFP is a decent designation in its own right, when used in the right way. It shows that a person at least has a base knowledge of personal finance principles, and it distinguishes them from the run-of-the-mill mutual fund salesmen that you see at a lot of shops.
But to go on a CFA forum and brag about having the CFP is kinda like a person walking into an NFL locker room and bragging about playing high school football.
They don’t have the CIMA either…and they would probably agree CFA > CIMA…given who they are.
Yes…I’ll take some fries with that please.
First, Bill Gross did earn his charter. Second, most portfolio managers that manage institutional money either have earned their charter, or have attended top business school. Just pick 10 random mutual funds and research the manager. Chances are 9/10 either has earned the charter or went to a top 5 business school.
No, going to Wharton for a week-long seminar does not count as attending a top business school. This claim and association is completely fraudulent.
Hook, line, and sinker. We’ve been trolled…should have stuck with a yawn.
Yeah, that really chaps my ass when I see somebody who “attended the Wharton School of Business”, when they really don’t even have a degree at all. Not even an associate’s from the local junior college.
A lot of people here are saying the CFA is much better than the CIMA, or should I say contains more, and I do think you’re right.
However, since the CFA takes a minimum of 2-2.5 years, often longer, it could be a valid approach to get the CIMA while taking the first CFA exam. Ie, use the CIMA to get in to the business and then extend your qualifications with a CFA. I do agree that if you have the CFA, there is not much point in going for the CIMA, but the other way seems like a valid approach to me. Especially since Wharton and Booth are stellar schools and a CIMA certification can be worth more than passing the first exam in the CFA, even though it is less than the full charter. Am I way off point?
No one’s saying CFAs are better investors than anyone else, in fact CFAI clearly forbids any candidate/member from insinuating it. However, CFA is the gold standard in asset management as far as designations go, there’s really no point arguing about it.
My point was not arguing about that. In my understanding, CFA is more rigorous, more recognized etc.
People have argued that taking the CIMA after the CFA gives nothing, or at least very little and as far as I understand, I am bound to agree.
However, my question was rather to use CIMA the other way, to take it on the way towards the charter. As we all know, the charter takes a long time to earn and even though passing the first exam is a merit in its own right, it doesn’t do too much to your resume. That is take the CIMA, don’t stop there, but continue on towards the charter and eventually end up with both…
That could be helpful, however I think the whole CFA curriculum compliments each level quite well, doing similar additional designations at the same time could be redundant or waste of time.
I have both. Got the CIMA first then the CFA charter. I would never suggest that anyone do it in the other order. There would be nothing gained by doing that. To say that the CIMA is “CFA light” is somewhat of an understatement.
^Elaborate, please. I’m interested.
I currently hold the CIMA and will be sitting for level 3 this June. The CIMA was an excellent entry into the world of MPT stats such as sharpe and information ratios as well as basics of concepts such as Time Value of Money, duration, convexity, and portfolio management efficient frontier theory. It also gives you a taste of things like Behavioral Finance, IPS, and Ethics. I feel it was a good warm up and gave me some underlying knowledge before beginning to study for level one.
The CIMA is a very light version taking the basics of concepts from primarily level 1 of the CFA. It is designed to understand how to compare Asset Managers’ Protfolios (ie. mutual funds and ETFs, etc). It gives you a basic knowledge of what you are looking at when using a report such as Zephyr or Morning Star Direct.
It costs over $6000 so I would only recommend doing it if your company will pay for it. The Wharton week was a great learning experience and overall it is a good program for very busy professionals who want an idea of what PMs and Analysts are talking about.
The CIMA does not make you qualified for any true analyst role. It is designed for Financial Advisors and Mutual Fund Wholesalers who do not have the time, or desire to go through the full CFA program.
Overall it is a very well designed training program to give busy working professionals a deeper insight into what these products do and what the managers actually mean when they discuss them. It is not anywhere near the bredth or scope of the CFA program as it really only covers a small percentage of level 1 concepts and maybe a few from level 2 and 3. It goes nowhere near as deep only giving basic undersatndings of these concepts.
I hope this helps to clarrify as there is some clear misconceptions on these forums.