Reach of CFA qualification in Canada

So this concern is quite a bit of a biggie because in Canada there are hardly any investment banks. There are a few boutique firms in downtown Toronto, but other than that, there are no specialized investment firms.

I have been applying to jobs hard during the past few weeks, trying to cold call people, set up info sessions, asking around for jobs, yada yada.

From the maybe 50 jobs that I’ve so far applied to labelled “Financial Analyst” only 4 of them made a mention of the CFA designation. The rest of the 46 jobs were heavily labelled with accoutning designations: CMA, CGA, CA.

This got me thinking: if you want to be a financial analyst in Canada… why pursue the CFA designation at all?

I believe Toronto has one of the highest concentration of CFA charterholders

Financial Analyst position is an accounting job, therefore companies usually seek account designations like the CA, CMA, CGA. CFA is used more in the financial market, jobs can include research, portfolio manager, and so on.

Please someone correct me if i’m wrong

In my experience, cfa turns up on quite a few job applications. May just be calgary though.

Hmm. That is interesting. So Financial Analysts are similar to accountants and therefore prefer CMA, CGA, or CA, but more specialized jobs like portfolio manager, or equity research prefer CFA?

Is anyone from Toronto like me, and only doing the CFA? Or are people also doing CA? What job titles are you applying for/have?

When I was job searching (unsuccessfully) in Canada, the accounting designations popped up way more than CFA did for the financial analyst positions. Mainly because CFA really isn’t needed for FA positions, but I also think they put the CGA/CMA on there just as a filter because lots of people have them and it sorts out less qualified/motivated ppl. CFA may be considered a plus for FA/SFA positions or to move up but it’s really mainly seen in portfolio management and higher finance than corp. financial analysis. In the US you generally don’t see the CPA as a requirement for financial analysts because the US primairly only has the one designation and most people get it through public accounting experience.

I’m in Montreal and I confirm that most Financial Analyst postings are Accounting related jobs.

Most of the jobs I’ve seen that are Financial Analyst that you are looking for are titled : Research Analyst, Equities Analyst, Bond Analyst, and so on.

I thought it was easier to find jobs in Toronto. Here in Montreal it’s not great and there is not a lot of postings.

Yes, I seem to have picked up on this trend as well. There are a few “Xxxxxx Analyst” positions that are CFA related like Equity, Research, Bond, Portfolio…etc

What are the others?

  1. Financial Analyst in Canada = accounting role

  2. Toronto has the highest ratio of charterholders relative to population. The rest of Canada doesn’t have many positions. I wouldn’t recommend moving here if you seriously want an asset or investment management career.