Online courses to become a Certified Financial Analyst (CFA)

Online courses to become a Certified Financial Analyst (CFA)

Becoming a certified financial analyst is a great career move. It helps you to progress in your career and creates the path to reach the zenith in your domain in the coming years. After becoming a financial analyst, you progress to senior analyst, manager and so on.

Now, most aspirants are already aware of the career path, but the question is how to get there. So, read on to learn financial analysis and its particulars and how to become a professional in this field.

How to become a certified financial analyst?

Have you wondered how to become a financial analyst? Becoming a certified analyst is not difficult, but for most aspirants, the path is not clear. That’s because they do not possess a clear roadmap and hence are unaware of the progression. This is where professional courses can be your saviour. Once you enrol for a CFA course, it will guide you through the process and help you reach the career goal you are aiming for.

So, read on to know more about these CFA courses.

The Syllabus for the Chartered Financial Analyst Course

The CFA Program is trifurcated into three levels. Progressing from each level involves clearing an exam of six hours. Each subject has a particular weightage which is as follows:

Level I

The fundamentals of investment analysis are given at this level. Level I contains ten sections. The ten sections deal with investment instruments.

Level II

How are investing instruments used? Level II deals with issues about various assets assessment for investment.

Level III

Level III combines all concepts like portfolio management, ration analysis and wealth planning. There are analytical methodologies that teach you all these concepts.

Moving ahead, there are different aspects of the certified financial analyst online course that you need to cover, as they will help you get a better understanding of the field. Here are the details –

Financial analysis

As you learn financial analysis, it helps to imbibe the basics of Financial Analysis in the student. There are topics like Mergers and Acquisitions, Private Equity and Equity Research.

Preparation of financial statements

You are taught about reading and understanding Financial Statements in this subject. They teach you about cash flow, P and L statements, revenues and expenses and also consolidated accounts and tangible assets.

Learning the concepts of MS Excel

You will learn how to manipulate data in MS Excel, where you learn how to present data in a spreadsheet and use it to present financial data and take various insights out of it.

Basics of Accounting

Get to know the entire process of accounting and book-keeping, dealing with various financial jargon, concepts of accounting, the accounting cycle and a practical walkthrough of several financial statements.

Ratio analysis

Ratio analysis is one of the most important subjects in this field, where you are taught ratio analysis objectives, DuPont analysis, types of ratios, consolidation and consolidated statements.

Financial modelling 

You get to learn how to create a basic broker financial model, types of data and variables in financial modelling, growth rates and proportions, the BEDMAS Principle, forecasting and modelling.

Job prospects and conclusion

As per reports, the hiring of financial analysts is expected to rise by 6% by 2030. So, you can get a sense of the fact that the opportunities will open up in the coming days, and so is the competition. Hence, you need to possess some extremely important soft skills as a financial analyst. Financial Analysts are involved in the presentation and explaining the financial data to clients and their superiors. So it is important to have strong communication skills as well. Also, you need to have sharp analytical and critical thinking skills. And please work on your software skills for sure because it will work in your favour in this field.

To conclude, as you are planning to become a financial analyst, completing a certified financial analyst online course can make a significant difference. In this regard, you can look at the Financial Analysis Prodegree course offered by Imarticus Learning that comes with placement assistance.