Hey everyone. Long time since I updated the blog. Many of you found out your passing/failing status by now. For those who passed, congratulations, you worked hard for this so enjoy the accomplishment and it is an accomplishment no matter what level you are. For those who failed, keep your head up and eyes focused on the goal. Many people walking around with the CFA letters on their business card failed one or more of these exams one or more times. No one cares how many times it takes you, just stay with it. Think about what you could have done better and make sure you implement it for next time. 

As for me, I finally changed my career into Finance. I moved into a Financial Planning and Analysis role on the Corp Finance side of the house. I'm responsible for a $85M worldwide CapEx budget and I'm also in charge of preparing the monthly preview and closing decks for the CFO. It's been pretty much a whirlwind experience since I started end of June, longer hours and it's taken some time to get out of the IT mindset and re-calibrate myself for how things are done on the finance side. 

I've already learned a ton this past month and a half and working on the front end of the business has been really illuminating. I have also used a lot of my CFA training, specifically on the Corp Finance side. Evaluating projects using MIRR and NPV, etc. I'm also in charge of reporting the FX impact on EBITDA(how we measure performance) to get a gauge on how much our performance is driven by operational efficiency vs pure FX movements. We're about to start our budgeting season now so I'll be in the mix of that too.

I still want to move into the Capital Market stuff in Treasury but for now there isn't much going on there. For those who want to know how I pulled this off, I work for a company that was recently taken private and is going much internal change. I had been supporting the Treasury team from IT and got in good with the Treasurer and Treasury manager. I mentioned to the manager I wanted to slide into his team should something open up and when something opened up on the Planning team that also reports to the Treasurer they asked me to come over. Best part? No paycut at all. One of my fears was that I would have to take a cut to make a move and depending on how much I wouldn't be able to afford it. 

My IT background actually helped me out a bit since there's a push to rationalize our reporting systems(we use SAP, Hyperion and Oracle Financials) which is right up my alley and my connections on the IT side have helped move things along as well. For all of you who work in IT and think it's an uphill battle to switch careers, my response is simple: it is. But, if you have the right connections, the right luck, and the background you can make it too. In my case the CFA progress I made was the clincher. All of these guys are jealous that I'm one test away from obtaining the charter and were impressed that I pursued it without even having experience.

So keep the faith fellas. No I'm not working for a hedge fund or mutual fund. Truth be told, I actually like the fact that our Treasury guys have Wall St working for them not vice versa.  There are mutliple paths for CFA charterholders and not every one is on the Wall St track. While I still have the goal of working in capital markets beggars cannot be choosers and this is a nice way to break in. 

I'm definitely going for Level 3 next year to wrap this up finally. Still considering the CTP as well for later this year.