I work at on of the biggest issuers of ABS (think auto loans, credit cards, etc.). I act as a co arranger which means I’m involved in every single step of the transaction, from mandating all parties to going on roadshows, except financial modeling. I’m the project manager for an ABS transaction.
I am wondering whether taking the CAIA would be of benefit to me in terms of knowledge regarding ABS and recognition. I rub shoulder with quite a few banks, rating agencies and investors but so far I haven’t seen the qualification much. Or would the CFA be better regarded/more relevant?
I could imagine of getting into asset management for alternative investments. Again CFA or CAIA? I’ also quite intrigued by the banking side. I come across quite a few different groups within structured finance. Does anybody know what subgroups are within structured finance and what they actually do? Would the CAIA be here of an advantage? Would it be possible to get from my current position into asset management or structured finance at a bank?
I mentioned that I don’t do any financial modeling. Does anybody know an online course for cash flow and/or WAL modeling? If not could you recommend some books? I’m looking specifically for modeling courses for ABS ( don’t want to become a quant though) and not IB.
CFA. CAIA doesn’t really open job opps in investment, it’s better for marketing and IR. Maybe when it’s older, more recognized, deeper curriculum, and lower pass rate will it be as useful as CFA to assist you in your search for investment jobs. Ok, back to things blowing up…where should I short?
Most sensible option is looking at those guys that buy your products, that would be the most easy transition…doing CFA and CAIA certainly adds some brownie points, more of a checklist thing than anything.
CFA doesn’t cover ABS in much detail at all!.. Not worth doing it IMO unless you’re interested in a broad financial knowledge. If you want to know more…then cover the fabozzi books.
? If you work for an issuer, you are in the perfect spot to learn more. Begin with the models of your own deals. Study your prospectuses, and the key docs. You are presumably getting frequent market updates from your IB’s. Pull down info from other issuers. Study how they do things. With the new RegAB 2 rules, you can get loan level data from public issuers. Try running your models using other’s data. Have conversations about Risk Retention and why you structure your deals they way you do (if you are a public issuer).
I went to the SFIG conference in February. Subprime came up in some of the sessions I attended. My limited observations were that on whole the message was ”not much to see here”. Take that for what it is given the messengers. With some of the underlying factors, that take appears a bit wobbly and the topic probably deserved more debate (maybe there was, but not that I saw).