CFA是否已经过时?

全球金融家们开始做功课。在买卖自己不完全了解的资产、承担自己不理解的风险的时代过后，金融行家们正在学着了解这些资产和风险。

市场一直上涨、利润轻松可得、所有资产都在增值的时代已经过去。如今，交易员、投资者乃至银行经理都需要真正的知识和更好的风险评估方法，来辨识被低估的资产——这些资产的表现可能仅略高于美国国债2%的收益率。

在美国，这尤其重要。有100多位基金经理正竞争加入公私合营计划，以收购美国财长蒂姆．盖特纳(Tim Geithner)承保的不良资产。

正如金融培训机构7City美国首席执行官吉尔．克里斯蒂(Gil Christie)所说，“他们需要了解资产的性质，如何评估这些资产以及产品的基本面。”

The world's financiers are doing their homework. After an era of buying and selling assets they did not fully understand, and taking risks they did not comprehend, financial wizards are learning to wise-up.

The era of rising markets and easy profits, in which everything increased in value, is over. Now, traders, investors, and even bank managers need real knowledge, and better ways of assessing risk, to identify undervalued assets that might just perform better than the 2 per cent return on a Treasury bill.

And nowhere are the stakes higher than in the US, where more than 100 fund managers are jostling for the spoils of a public-private partnership to buy up troubled assets underwritten by Treasury secretary Tim Geithner.

As Gil Christie, US chief executive of financial training firm 7City observes, “They need to understand what the assets are, how they are being valued, and the fundamentals of the products.”

So while the west's battered banking industry draws in its horns, sheds staff, and pares recruitment and training budgets, “the better [training] opportunities are on the buy-side [investing institutions],” Mr Christie says.

However, no financial training or business school is claiming a bonanza. Mr Christie says 7City's US growth has slowed. Peter Houillon, UK chief executive of training provider Kaplan , concedes that margins are under pressure.

But Mr Christie says investment management firms are cautiously rebuilding training budgets to ensure analysts and fund managers have the skills to compete in markets where asset prices are uncertain and asset classes are becoming more diverse.

In the US, this has resulted in quite lively business for continuous training, and in recent months, renewed financial training business from the investment management industry.

On the banking side, on both sides of the Atlantic fewer clients remain, recruitment has slowed, and reorganisation has yet to translate into new training plans. But regulation is set to tighten, and when it does, compliance requirements will probably trigger increased training demands, especially for those selling financial products to consumers in the UK and US.

But in a multi-polar, multi-speed financial world, the less developed financial industries of Asia and the Middle East continue to show strong demand for skilled professionals, and good business growth for many training organisations.

Nothing illustrates the underlying trend better than registrations to sit the exams of the CFA Institute this month. Though the financial industry absorbs many with Masters degrees in Business Administration and Finance, the Chartered Financial Analyst qualification, pursued part-time by those already hired, has become the industry's benchmark.

The number of candidates worldwide sweating over the series of papers this month was 128,600, a 14 per cent increase on June 2008. In many regions growth was above the global trend. Registrations in London, the Institute's biggest exam centre after New York, reached 8,098 candidates, taking the UK rise to 18 per cent. Registrations in France surged 24 per cent and in Germany 21 per cent.