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FINANCE
courses in the country need improvement and modification
to suit the needs of the growing financial environment.
It is also, by far, the most lucrative field among
commerce-related programs, according to the president of
Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Philippines.
“For
now, students have the notion that accounting is the
good field to get into, but finance is a more lucrative
field right now,” said Mark Yu, who is also the chief
financial officer of Seaoil and head of the junior
committee of the Financial Executives Institute of the
Philippines (Finex).
Yu noted
that a CFA charter holder working as a portfolio or
account manager is capable of earning $450,000 annually.
A
financial analyst earns a CFA designation after passing
a series of three examinations offered by the CFA
Institute of the USA. A candidate must be in the final
year of his or her bachelor program or have at least
four years’ qualified professional work experience.
CFA
charter holders are usually tapped by international
investment bodies such as Citigroup, Credit Suisse
Group, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC and
ING Group NV.
Yu noted
that financial courses in the country need modification
to include studies in derivatives, ethics, portfolio
management and analyzing financial statements.
He said
CFA Philippines has already proposed these improvements
to the Department of Education.
He noted
that finance-related courses in the Philippines such as
economics are not being taught in the financial
perspective.
“The
curriculum needs improvement so that it can be taught in
a financial perspective. Economics, for instance, is
being taught in the political perspective,” he said when
asked about the challenges facing finance education in
the country.
Finex
yesterday signed a memorandum of agreement with CFA
Philippines, Citibank, the Asian Institute of
Management, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the
University of Philippines Diliman to conduct a training
program for 70 Philippine universities participating in
the 10th Intercollegiate Finance Competition (ICFC) to
be held at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on October
13.
Local
universities will be competing against Thailand’s
Chulalongkorn University and Assumption University and
Singapore’s National University of Singapore and the
Singapore Management University.
The ICFC
aims to benchmark and elevate the standard of finance
education in the county. The final 50 questions in the
final leg of the competitions will be based on the CFA
Level 1 exam with topics ranging from ethics, corporate
finance to economics.
The
“ICFC proves to be one of the most reputable finance
competitions in the region, as manifested by this year’s
participation of top universities in Southeast Asia,” Yu
said.
The
first ICFC was held in 1999 with participants from 17
schools in Metro Manila. |
