CERTIFIABLY TALENTED
Certifying Chinese expertise.
By James Haagen in Business China

As China’s financial sector struggles to modernize, demand for armies of experts to lead the process is on the rise. In response, fledgling but eager Chinese financial professionals are signing up en masse to obtain the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation to demonstrate their readiness to tackle China’s financial-market challenges—and, of course, to reap the accompanying riches for themselves. The CFA is a globally recognized industry qualification issued by a U.S. non-profit organization to those who pass a three-stage written examination. But now, this exploding interest in financial courses among Chinese has also provided an opening for others to move in on the CFA’s traditional turf.

A little over a decade after it was first introduced in mainland China, the test to become a CFA is seen as nothing less than an entry ticket into an already sizzling Chinese financial industry. When the CFA program was first offered in China in 1996, 24 candidates signed up. Four years later that number still stood at just 135. But following China’s accession to the World Trade Organization and commitment to open the country’s financial sector, the CFA’s popularity skyrocketed. In 2006 mainland China produced 7,785 candidates—more than any other country besides the United States and Canada, according to the Virginia-based CFA Institute.

The CFA’s surging popularity in China has not escaped the notice of competing programs. One, which touts a more technical approach, is the Certificate of Quantitative Finance (CQF), offered in China for the first time in July. The CQF was designed by Paul Wilmott, a leading expert on quantitative finance who has published more than 100 articles on mathematical modeling and derivatives in leading financial journals. Launched in 2003, it is intended for professionals either working in or intending to move into derivatives and risk management.