So after seeing it repeated so many times how ridiculously competitive it is to land a decent gig in Canada, and that it’s virtually impossible in India. I wondered, if you could start your career again, where would you go for the best shot at success? The US, UK, Singapore, Switzerland??
From this link 44% of FY12 candidates were in APAC region and 33% in North America. 65% of charterholders are in North America, whilst only 15% in APAC, a pretty big difference compared to the percentage of candidates. Or is the difference due to the institute not having a big presence there until recent times so naturally, the larger portion of members will be in the US where CFAI originated? Europe has 16% of candidates and 16% of charterholders, does that make Europe the most stable place to find a job?
The CFAI only considers charterholders. Do they take into account those who have passed all 3 levels but chose not to get the charter despite having the requisite experience because of its high annual fees?
Being European myself, I would say the best place to be a charterholder in Europe by far is London. In 2nd place probably switzerland. Probably outside Europe Asia comes in first place - developing wealth with a strong demand for investment services. I would imagine the USA and Canada are absolutely saturated with CFA charterholders so probably not a good place to be one.
Agreed, i’m in London myselff and there are plenty of opportunities, although, usually they want more European people rather than brits, we are too ignorant to speak a second language.
I completely agree with everyone’s comments so far concerning Canada. Canada has a very educated labor force and the job market is extremely competitive - everyone here has an MBA or CFA, tell me who doesn’t have either it has become so diluted. So you are now seeing employers asking for graduate level education in quantitative fields such as physics, math, and stats.
i can well imagine there are plenty of out of work/underemployed charterholders in london. I doubt that would be the case in zurich. hard for non EU workers to get here also. language skills also a big plus of course (e.g. italian, spanish etc).
