Hey Guys, I just got this email, comments? February 25, 2009 To the GARP membership: The financial crisis is radically altering the global financial system. The cause of the crisis and how to tackle its effects will be the subject of much debate over the coming months and years. Irrespective of the conclusions, how risks were managed and the future role of the financial risk professional will play a prominent part in the debate. This crisis has also brought to the forefront the importance of the role of a professional risk manager. A strong consensus has emerged that it must be objective and independent, and a collaborative voice providing advice and opinion to a firm’s senior management. Risk managers are now gaining a place at the senior management table, charged with creating a culture of risk awareness throughout the organization. Given this evolution of the discipline of financial risk management, risk professionals must be prepared to rise to the challenges the marketplace is presenting them. They must be able to respond to the complexities of a new global and interconnected marketplace. One important way to ensure they are able to meet these challenges is to be sure that their skill set is sufficient to react to dynamic and evolving demands. GARP’s FRM® Committee and Board of Trustees are also responding to this change in the financial risk manager’s status and role. Their recognition, and after much study, understanding of the increased demands that will be placed on financial risk managers in the future has required them to make important changes to the FRM program’s syllabus. These changes are designed to ensure that the FRM program continues to reflect the steadily increasing and demanding skills necessary for a professional financial risk manager to respond to the complexities of a rapidly changing marketplace. Starting in November the FRM program will begin transitioning to a two level examination format by offering for the last time the full FRM exam and for the first time Level I of the new two level FRM exam program. Level I will cover core areas of risk management, such as quantitative analysis, financial markets and products and essential risk modeling. Level II will cover specific topics on the practical implementation and execution of measurement and management of market, credit and operational risk, as well as a new section covering current issues in financial markets. Commencing in May 2010, and again in November, both Levels I and II will be offered to candidates. That offering schedule will continue permanently into the future. Your Board of Trustees and the FRM Committee work hard to ensure that the FRM program and GARP’s other certification programs evolve with the financial markets. It is only with this type of attention to the markets and their demands on the professionals that work in the financial marketplace that you can be assured that the professional designations you earn from GARP, and the other GARP programs you take, will provide you with a positive and rewarding experience, increasing your opportunity for career advancement. We realize that you may have many questions relating to the new FRM program syllabus. Please go to our website, at www.garp.com/frmexam/faq.aspx, for additional details. We want to thank you for your support of GARP and its programs. It is only due to the confidence you have placed in us that we have been able to achieve our global success. As the world’s leading association for financial risk professionals, we will continue to work hard to ensure that the risk profession and those who practice in it are recognized for the benefits they offer and the skills they possess. Yours truly, René Stulz Chairman FRM Committee William Martin Chairman GARP Board of Trustees Richard Apostolik President and CEO GARP
wtf?
Sounds like a good time to take the test to take after L2 in June.
Makes sense. Their curricula covers tons of unrelated material from operational risks models to hedging with futures and options. Best decision in my opinion.
Well, I actually think that this will help FRM and GARP as a long term option…a one exam designation is a bit of a joke to me. Given what has happened in the financial industry in terms of excessive risk exposures by banks and insurance companies, and also what is going to happen in the Hedge Fund industry the next few yrs (sort of like when a dude gets out of a cold pool), not to mention the collapse of real estate, and the slowing of PE the silver medal designation trade is Long FRM, Short CAIA
Agree with it. Sucks though that I’ll have to do 2 levels if I actually decide to get FRM certs!!! DDDAAMMMIITTTT!!!
Do you think this will devalue the designation if you pass it prior to the 2 level exam? i.e. value passing the 2 level more than passing the one level?
Just my opinion… but I would imagine passing 2 levels would make your cert more valuable as it covers more material in preparation for the “The financial crisis is radically altering the global financial system”. I wonder how many ppl in NYC is taking this…
I_HeartAccounting Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Do you think this will devalue the designation if > you pass it prior to the 2 level exam? > i.e. value passing the 2 level more than passing > the one level? I don’t think anyone will care. It’s not like people ask those old CFAs what was the passing rate when they got it (remember those 80% + passing rates on L3 not so long ago)
If i was your boss i would ask you. HAHAHAHAHA
Mona8835 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Agree with it. Sucks though that I’ll have to do > 2 levels if I actually decide to get FRM certs!!! > > > DDDAAMMMIITTTT!!! I suppose if you write it in November 2009, and pass, you’ll only need to pass one exam! Guys, how do you think this will change the way we view GARP’s FRM exam as compared to PRMIA’s PRM four-tiered exam? Will it devalue the PRM or will PRMIA follow?
This will improve the stature of FRM, by making it a difficult certification to acquire. But then you have to ask, what have all the thousands of FRMs done to alert us about risk models? In fact most risk modelers are FRMs. For that matter, thousands of CFA, MBA, FRM, PRM, CAIA, CFP and PhDs all together came up with innovative ways of selling junk. So just changing the 4 item answer set to 3, or 1 level exam to 2, is not going to fix the underlying issue.
Not too sure what PRMIA can do… What changes do you think they can make to make their designation more difficult to obtain. I figure with FRM or PRM, the only way to get around this is to include some type of written component. Do you see that comming?
I_HeartAccounting Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Not too sure what PRMIA can do… What changes do > you think they can make to make their designation > more difficult to obtain. > I believe they’ll have to follow by the same rationale that have now made GARP change theirs (as outlined by cfa_mba_caia in the other post).
what is the “recommended” amount of study for hte FRM?
jrs130 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > what is the “recommended” amount of study for hte > FRM? What is your background, did you complete any levels of the CFA?
i see a lot of ppl doing the FRM. its nice to get i out of the way.
I_HeartAccounting: writing lv II in june…masters in finance, work in fixed income trading
jrs130 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I_HeartAccounting: > > writing lv II in june…masters in finance, work > in fixed income trading Honestly jrs, i would say about 130 hours…haha no seriously, i would say about 150 hours. I wrote level 2 before FRM as well, but did not have the same background as you. Only a bit of work in credit risk and an undergrad in business. The only really “new” topics were VaR, certain areas of credit risk (the credit portfolio stuff) operational risk, a little bit of the quant reading and Basel II. Everything else is covered by Level 2. I would just buy the Schweser stuff and you should be gold!
sweet…this should be fun…lol thanks I_HeartAccounting