Good idea to sit FRM 2 and CFA 3 at the same time?

[freddel02]

Hi there,

I was wondering if it was a good idea to sit FRM next 8th of May and CFA in June the 5th?
I didn't find FRM part 1 that challenging since I had covered at least 50% of the curriculum as an undergraduate in finance and for the CFA.
FRM part 2 I don't know if it would be the case, I think that the fixed income part is similar to CFA level 2 for the rest I have no idea..

Thanks for the tips.

 

[ShaktiRathore]

Hi,
CFA l2 has syllabus not similar to frm 2. As i know the frm focuses on risk management concepts while cfa focuses on investments concepts. They have some similar topics say 20%. As you said there are commonalities in some topics like fixed income, portfolio management but disimilarities are alot like frm has VAR,merton model, operational risk, basel, which are the main topics not there in cfa l2 while cfa l2 has ethics,fra,equity valuation which are main topics not there in frm p2. So there is a lot of dissimilarity and the common topics are minimal(i was optimistic above).
Its upto to you to decide to sit for both exams or not if you want a better picture of financial concepts from every angle than go for both which would be good if time permits and you can concentrate on both.

best of luck!!

thanks

 

[Bryon]

I'm tempted to do the same but I think I'll just focus on CFA level 3 and will do FRM2 Nov next year.
The biggest obstacle for me would be the amount of memorisation required for FRM2.
I did not spend that much time studying for FRM1 after my CFA 2 this June, less than 100hrs I would say.

 

[sleepybird]

If you're doing CFA L3, I suggest focusing on CFA L3 first.
CFA L3 seems easy (the reading material seems very easy, nothing very quantitative but a lot of qualitative stuffs such as behavioral finance, IPS, etc.) but IMO is the most difficult of the 3 levels - morning session is essay format.

There are SOME overlaps between CFA L2 and FRM in terms of fixed income/equity valuation, alternative investments, derivative and portfolio management, but CFA L2 also put a lot of weights on financial statement analysis, which is not part of FRM.