Chartered Financial Analyst

The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) programme is a postgraduate professional certification that is offered internationally to investment and financial professionals by the CFA Institute, which is headquartered in the United States and was formerly known as the Association for Investment Management and Research, or AIMR.

The programme provides a generalist knowledge of other areas of finance in addition to teaching a wide variety of topics related to advanced investment analysis. These topics include security analysis, statistics, probability theory, fixed income, derivatives, economics, financial analysis, corporate finance, alternative investments, and portfolio management. A candidate is considered to have earned the "CFA charter" and has become a "CFA charterholder" after they have shown that they have successfully completed the programme as well as additional professional prerequisites. At least 175,000 individuals throughout the world have become charterholders as of March 2022, representing an annual growth rate of 3.5 percent since 2012. (including effects of the pandemic). Candidates that are successful in earning their CFA charter require an average of four years to do so.

J.P. Morgan, UBS, Royal Bank of Canada, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs are some of the most prestigious companies in the world who hire CFA charterholders.