The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) qualification, the mainstay of asset management and sell-side research roles, is fast gaining traction in the Gulf region. Is it right for you?

The CFA Institute has 116,000 members worldwide, but charterholders are surprisingly thin on the ground in the Gulf region. There are currently 652 in the GCC – 304 of which are in the UAE – but 4,061 have enrolled for exams this year.

However, its appeal is spreading, says Mohammed Al-Qatari, head of investments at Saad Group in Saudi Arabia and himself a CFA.

“Regional banks in the Middle East are increasingly demanding the CFA charter for their professional staff, not only in asset management but also in other investment and commercial banking activities.”

The downside is that the CFA is a home study course, requiring 250 hours for each of the three exams, and so offers none of the networking opportunities you’d get by doing an MBA at a top school.

The upside is that it carries a lot of clout internationally, due to its focus on quantitative skills, relevance to the financial sector and vigorous assessment process. It’s also relatively cheap, with enrolment and exam fees coming in at $2,200. You would, however, have to pay an annual membership fee.

One criticism levelled at the CFA is that the bar for entry is low, and that the high volume of charterholders dilutes the prestige of the qualification.

Sami Nabulsi, head of investment banking at Global-Jordan, says it’s the opposite in the GCC: “I get constant requests from local institutions to find CFA charterholders for hiring. Unfortunately, the number of CFAs is very small and most of them already occupy senior positions.”

Another stumbling block is that as a professional qualification, the CFA is mainly open to people already in the industry – a lot of asset managers offer the level-one exam as standard for graduate trainees – which means it’s more a chance to move up in the industry than side-step into it.

But the CFA does provide the tools to develop creative solutions to complex financial problems, reckons Al-Qatari: “I often found myself representing my department or division to discuss complex structures the bank was considering for clients. Many of my colleagues were struggling to understand the concepts.”