As part of my career move into Risk Management, I need to eventually take on the role of Spire's CF14 (Risk Manager) Regulated Person. In order to do this, I need to pass the FSA's Approved Persons (AKA FITness) criteria.
One route is via qualifications, secondary to a firm's commitment to your capability.
Unfortunately, there's no qualification which is perfectly molded to both what I need to do for my job – risk management for a prop trading firm – and is also on the FSA's approved qualifications list. So the latter will be fulfilled via completion of the Investment Operations Certificate at the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and the former by a mixture of sitting the Professional Risk Management exams – a comprehensive study of all things risk-in-financial-services related – and on the job training.
But baby-steps. Last Friday I passed the first stage of the IOC – the Introduction to Securities and Investment – with a not-to-shabby score of 90%. Woohoo.
