IT skills after FRM

[aosahmedsami197]

What IT skills ( programming and excel) should I learn to complement FRM curriculum ? Can anyone escort me? Thanks in advance

 

[nc27]

What IT skills ( programming and excel) should I learn to complement FRM curriculum ? Can anyone escort me? Thanks in advance

VBA and R (or Python)

 

[Sjegathe]

R, Matlab, Python, (C++) or C

 

[shuffleshoe]

Just speaking from my personal experience from the jobs I had in Consulting and Banking:

- Python is hot right now and it's being used the most for developing the risk models. To a lesser extent R as well but it depends on the company which of the 2 they're using. I'd say focus on Python and you'll be comfortable with R language as well. You can easily transition if needed.
- Chances are you won't be needing to develop anything new in VBA, just be comfortable understanding the code and how to use it for the (old) VBA tools some companies still have in use. It's being mostly phased out for Python tools or more sophisticated proprietary Risk Management software.
- Be comfortable with Excel in general. Pivot tables, charts, and know your shortcuts.
- Bonus: be comfortable with SQL, specifically being able to write queries. It's not related directly to Financial Risk. But, it's easy, you'll see it a lot with anything related to data, and it's a skill that's high in demand.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Just speaking from my personal experience from the jobs I had in Consulting and Banking:

- Python is hot right now and it's being used the most for developing the risk models. To a lesser extent R as well but it depends on the company which of the 2 they're using. I'd say focus on Python and you'll be comfortable with R language as well. You can easily transition if needed.
- Chances are you won't be needing to develop anything new in VBA, just be comfortable understanding the code and how to use it for the (old) VBA tools some companies still have in use. It's being mostly phased out for Python tools or more sophisticated proprietary Risk Management software.
- Be comfortable with Excel in general. Pivot tables, charts, and know your shortcuts.
- Bonus: be comfortable with SQL, specifically being able to write queries. It's not related directly to Financial Risk. But, it's easy, you'll see it a lot with anything related to data, and it's a skill that's high in demand.

Hi @shuffleshoe great feedback, thank you! The reason I prefer R (aside from home bias) is that I'm not a developer or working in a professional production environment. My work is primarily data/statistical analysis (e.g., EDA) and it's just easy to quickly perform analytics. If I were building applications, I think I'd favor python, but I don't do that. I know they both have packages, but R's package ecosystem (tidyverse in particular) is so wide and convenient. Admittedly, I've only used python when required for courses however, so in my case, it's mostly momentum comfort with a tool. Thanks,

 

[shuffleshoe]

Hi @shuffleshoe great feedback, thank you! The reason I prefer R (aside from home bias) is that I'm not a developer or working in a professional production environment. My work is primarily data/statistical analysis (e.g., EDA) and it's just easy to quickly perform analytics. If I were building applications, I think I'd favor python, but I don't do that. I know they both have packages, but R's package ecosystem (tidyverse in particular) is so wide and convenient. Admittedly, I've only used python when required for courses however, so in my case, it's mostly momentum comfort with a tool. Thanks,

Very valid points. I've experienced before that instead of building an entire function/model into Python, my colleagues found out there's a package in R which perfectly suits the purpose. R is very strong, especially for statistics. It definitely depends which area of Financial Risk you're working in inside the company which decides the relevant tools.