CFA as a Career changing option

yukon

最是能看到坛子上有人问：CFA对找工作有什么好处。看到一个不错的帖子忍不住转帖一下，

同学甲（此人40岁，年纪大了点）：

Hi guys,

I am basically a Chartered Accountant, at the moment a Shattered Accountant!
I need a bailout in the form of your opinions and thoughts:

I have around 10+ years experience in the financial services sector- around 6+ years as Accounts/Finance-in-charge of a financial services company and the next 4+ years as a IT Business Analyst with various investment banks.

I am slightly confused because I am getting conflicting advice from people on these questions:

1. Whether a CFA charter will add any value to my career at this stage i.e. given the fact that I already have 10+ years experience?
2. I guess I will be getting a charter immediately after clearing Level-3 since I have relevant 6+ years of accounting experience.
3. Once I qualify, do I need to start from scratch or will I get due consideration for my accounting or Business Analysis experience which I admit may not be too relevant from a CFA point of view?
4. Is there any way I can leverage my 10+ years experience (including 4 years in ITl) while getting into a research or a portfolio manager position?

5. If I were to start from scratch, I guess I have to be prepared for a 'massive' undercutting as far as comp package is concerned, isn't it? Mine is currently at 65k+ British pound sterling per annum

I want to use CFA as an option to get into research while at the same time I want the employer to give due weightage to my huge experience as well. Is this possible or am I living in a utopian world?

同学乙（此人28岁，自己说工作了5年）

Let me be blunt but honest. CFA is meant to leverage your career. If you don't have a career in portfolio management or related (risk, whatever), the added value of a CFA is minimal because they'll want you to start at the bottom anyway. And those are the jobs that you can also get without having worked your ass off for three brutal exams. And if you don't get them, you won't get them with a CFA level 3 on your resume either so in that case it's time well saved.

So answer to your questions:

1. Minimal
2. Not sure, work experience is changed every few months so it seems but to my knowledge it won't
3. Nobody will give an accountant a mandate to manage x million of money. Not a decent company anyway
4. Probably not for the money you're making right now.
5. Exactly. In the current market we pay junior analysts in London some 40k. Simply because we can get very well educated individuals with that offer. And honestly, based on the little that I know I wouldn't know why youre

In short, you'll need to understand that accounting experience will NOT be useful. Neither will IT. So with a very decent salary you're having now, you'll really want to do it and face the consequences or forget about it and go for a controlling role and see if you can work yourself up from that.