CFA: Your International Finance Passport

From Shanghai to New York, asset managers recognise a single, international finance qualification above all else: the coveted Chartered Financial Analyst. The CFA program has three levels and is a postgraduate certification for investment and financial professionals. There are ten topic areas in the curriculum; ethics, quantitative methods, economics, financial statement analysis, corporate finance or corporate issuers, equity and fixed income as well as derivatives, alternative investments and portfolio management.

CFA exams are long and notoriously difficult with pass rates often less than 30%. The curriculum is huge, so to pass you have to focus on the most tested material and develop ways of remembering the key concepts and formulas. Jhan Burger has been teaching CFA students for more than 15 years and he joined our webinar last week to chat about a brand new community and range of CFA exam preparation courses that he is rolling out. As he explained in our interview, if you can think of a top 10 investment bank or asset manager, he’s probably taught their employees.

Jhan’s new group Analyst Secrets CFA is already available for you to join and get the help you need; click to find out more.

BlackRock, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Aberdeen Standard and PIMCO have all benefitted from Jhan’s storytelling and engaging approach to dry and tedious subjects like accountancy and quantitative methods. His pass rates are amongst the highest in the industry and even Jhan’s LinkedIn recommendations confirm how many people he has helped achieve their CFA dreams.

People like Gabriel Osamor: “Jhan is a legendary tutor, who is a master of his art” or Ashley Maguire “excellent and charismatic teacher who has a knack for simplifying complex topics and teaching in a way that is not only easy to remember on exam day, but stays with you afterwards”. One day after class a student asked Jhan if he had recorded any of his fascinating CFA stories and memory tricks. He quickly realised he should capture his teaching methods so that he could reach more people, and thats exactly what he did.

“Jhan is a legendary tutor, who is a master of his art”

Over the next few months, the Analyst Secrets team are launching a series of online courses, each focused on CFA Level 1 and 2 topics. As Jhan explained in the webinar: “I’m not looking to replace your current material provider … rather I’m the anti-material guy, all I’m trying to do in these lectures is to share with you the best of the best tips and tricks that are attacking the hardest areas of the curriculum.” With an average study time of 300 hours for each level, the biggest investment to get a CFA is your time – and Jhan is clearly the best partner to help you.

Our live audience had many questions for Jhan about CFA; career options, current studies, work prospects, travelling opportunities and more. Particularly interesting for me was a fellow engineer asking if he could make the switch into CFA because he found accountancy very challenging. Jhan explained there are many engineers in his courses and who have been successful with CFA. All I can remember from my high school accounting is debits on the left and credits on the right – perhaps I should take Jhan’s course!

But the most common question was about getting more information and finding out when the new CFA courses will be rolled out. Jhan has already established a vibrant online community called the Analyst Secrets CFA Group which you can join by clicking here. Join up and stay informed so that  just like Ashley and Gabriel, you too can achieve your CFA dream.

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Scroll to Top