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PRM VS. FRM – WHY I CHOSE PRM
As you might now, I am undergoing the CFA examination.
CFA gives you an incredible indepth transversal knowledge of the finance area and I am grateful for that. In the mean time, I’m quite a techie guy => looking for advanced quantitative stuff as well. I strongly believe an advanced quantitative education is a strong complement to CFA designation.
Being interested by growing area of risk management, I had a look at possible credible designation available on the market.
Naturally I stumbled upon FRM for Financial Risk Manager (http://www.garp.com/frmexam/ from GARP). After digging a little bit, I found that another designation existed with advanced quantitative content and quite recognized in the investment community too : PRM for Professional Risk Manager (http://www.prmia.org).
PRM vs. FRM
How to make a choice? Well that was the hard part! (for the name, I prefer FRM since it accounts for ‘financial’ focus of risk management in its name)
My first approach was quite straightforward. I went to a financial-jobs internet website (http://www.efinancialcareers.com) and I searched for jobs with first ‘frm’ as keyword and then ‘prm’ as keyword. Result of this test was cristal clear: 22 answers for FRM vs. 3 for PRM. => my choice went to FRM.
Full of doubts and uncertainties, I decided to give it another go on two other financial-jobs websites and here results were more mixed. FRM still had the hedge, but in fact lots of job offers contained FRM as an acronym for their own business units and not for the FRM certification. In fact, when clear reference to FRM certification was made, PRM was quoted too (almost always). => back to the beginning: which one to choose…?
Below are misc elements that helped me take a decision:
pro PRM:
• supposedly a bit more quantitative than FRM (I’m looking for this quantitative aspect)
• less costly (exam prices are lower, no annual membership fee – for now)
• clearer self-study line (single handbook covering all exams vs. a handbook + core-readings for FRM with visibly only core-readings as important (=> why having a dedicated handbook if it does not exactly cover the exam content) & having an accumulated list of different readings (what core-readings consist of) does not look like a smooth & effective way to learn for me)
• greater flexibility: 4 exams that you can pass in any order at any business day (with restriction though to pass them within 2 years) vs. 2 exams that you can pass only twice a year in specific locations
• backed by top-tier one universities: Columbia University, Duke University, Bocconi School, HEC, Hong-Kong University, National University of Singapore, Trinity College… (full list: http://prmia.org/index.php?page=aboutus&option=universitypartners)
pro FRM:
• still the hedge in job offer (though only slightly in the end)
• work experience required (I find it important, you hardly can be a professional without relevant work experience)
• older than PRM (1997 vs. 2002) => more recognized
• 17k graduates to date (I did not manage to find the number of PRM graduates, I only found the number of members which is not representative) => huge pool of potential colleagues, who do know about the PRM program
• article on wallstreetjournal, stating a huge increase in the number of applicants (+80% in 2009 with 23k candidates!!!!) (article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703278604574624513398904666.html)
conclusion: the wsj article definitely identified FRM as the train to take for me. Its pool of participants is increasing at high speed leaving out competition (unfortunately I did not find similar stats for PRM, it’s too bad) => I wanted to go for FRM (despite all these advantages that PRM has! incl. free-membership)
not-for-profit
I was about to register for FRM exam when I read an article on the GARP scandal (http://www.riskglossary.com/link/garp_scandal.htm andhttp://www.riskglossary.com/papers/garp_letter.htm). Basically the short story is that at first, only GARP (and its FRM certification) existed. But at some point they started to make real-money out of it. So they decided to change the status of the company from a not-for-profit organization to a regular for-profit organization. Some people working at GARP felt betrayed and decided to create a real not-for-profit organization managing risk-management profesionnals: PRMIA and its PRM certification.
Well, it might look stupid, but this was decisive in making my choice. I mean cfa is a not-for-profit organization, all universities/high-schools I know are not-for-profit organization. Why? At some point, when you’re in the knowledge business, I find it not appropriate to have as goal profit-maximization. It is not the way it’s done in the other places => why should it be the case here? To me this is not ethically appropriate and GARP has not the best focus in mind.
It’s a bit the same awkwardness that existed when auditing firms where consulting firms to the same clients as well. At some point you have a conflict of interest. The thing is that I was upset with FRM getting that expensive: now it is made of two exams (=> twice the price!), you have expensive curriculums + additional expensive handbook and I’ve noticed that annual fees have been rising up quite sharply and steadily. It really made me feel that they wanted to skim the milk out of me. Now that I know they are simply a ‘profit-driven’ organization, I understand it and I’m simply not interested.
So my choice is to undertake PRM:
• recognized to be as demanding as FRM by experts in the field
• more quantitative that FRM
• backed by top-tier universities (really important for me)
• less expensive
• more flexible
• ethically grounded
Right now it might be a bit less reknowned than FRM outside the risk-management domain, but I do hope they will gain exposure (it looks like, they recently opened new offices in Asia) and I will try to support them and expand recognition of its program. I find that being more ethically sound make the whole affair less risky on the long-term, and guess what: it’s about risk-management!
I hope you will choose PRM too.
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