Pursue CA

PURSUE CA COURSE

If you are a young credit officer below 35 years of age and especially if you are below 30 years, it is highly suggested that you pursue Chartered Accountancy course. Ofcourse, a blanket suggestion such as this might not be appropriate since the learning you need to undertake depends heavily on the career path you have in mind for your future. You might want to stay in the bank and reach the level of top management; or you may want to work for a couple of years in the bank and quit the job to pursue a MBA; or you may want to quit the job and start your own company; or you might quit the job in a couple of years and use the banking domain expertise to enter IT industry – depending on the career path you have in mind, the suggestion would vary. I am assuming here that you desire to work in banking sector and closely related areas of finance and financial modeling. In that case, it is highly recommended that you immediately register for CA course.

This post is not to describe about the process and stages involved in CA course. Please visit www.icai.org for complete details about CA course. This article will explain what are the advantages if CA course is done.

Purely from knowledge perspective, pursuing CA course will equip you with the right grasp on accounting and financial aspects that will immensely help you in your credit related areas of balance sheet analysis, ratio analysis, loan appraisal, project finance, working capital assessment, etc. You would be in a better position to scrutinise balance sheets, better understand the games companies play with numbers and will be better placed to ask key questions that will positively impact the quality of your credit note
If you happen to be a financial analyst with MBA (Finance) qualification already, then do not waste time – enrol for CA today! The combination of MBA (Finance) and CA is the most preferred qualification in today’s market of finance jobs. You will be among the most sought after professionals in the job market. If you also take into account the banking domain experience you have, it is a deadly combination that will endear you to headhunters. If you are willing to make a career change and quit the bank job, your career will take a fresh turn for the better. However even if you stay in the bank, it will place you in a better position for promotions. This is because today public sector banks are recruiting Chartered Accountants in Scale III directly. The demand for credit professionals will only increase in the future. Armed with CA qualification, you will beat your peers in promotions as far as advances field is concerned
The internet is changing the way of the workplace. Today, online work platforms like elance are re-defining employment. Today, you can earn income sitting from home by doing freelance projects for clients across the world. The two most sought after areas in this regard are content writing and finance works. If you have a proven qualification like CA, you can take up a number of part-time accounting and finance related works sitting right in your home. This will earn you extra income besides your salary. The prevailing rates for online work for quality finance works is in the range of $10 to even $50 per hour provided you can deliver the quality work demanded by clients. A CA qualification will easily enable you to take up many finance related works commonly sought by clients including book keeping, accounting services, financial analysis, audit review, investor writeups, answering client queries, developing integrated financial models, etc.
If you are below 30 years with a plan to switch to IT industry after gaining 3-5 years experience in banking sector, you should seriously consider pursuing CA course. IT majors such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Accenture, etc. need bankers with domain knowledge of banking. This was the reason why in the period between 2005-2008, so many young financial analysts from public sector banks got big salaries by switching to IT jobs. Later the market sort of flattened due to economic downturn but now it is picking again. You must be using Core Banking Solution in your daily work. These applications are developed by IT staff by taking inputs from people with domain experience in banking. This is where you can make it big in IT industry. IT will never leave banking sector given that all banks are computerised. IT firms always need to keep developing applications to cater to the banking sector. Infact BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) is the most important sector for many IT majors. For example, out of Infosys FY 2012-13 total revenue of Rs. 40352 crore. income from BFSI segment was Rs. 13680 crore i.e. one-third of entire income. The same is the case for many other IT majors. The point is IT companies will keep on developing applications for banking sector in one form or another. Within these applications, those related to loans and risk management are the most important. For this, pure computer programmers won’t suffice. They need people with core domain knowledge in banking. If you are someone with banking experience in the area of credit plus qualifications of MBA and CA, you will straight away land in the role of senior analyst in a major IT company. The pay for this combination is truly meteoric.
Though CA qualification includes completion of Final stage, there are many who do not do Final but stop at Inter stage. Final stage requires you to do three years articleship with a practising CA. In case this is not suitable for you as it will require you to quit the job, atleast complete Inter stage. IPCC (i.e. Inter stage) has practitioner oriented syllabus including Accounting, Cost Accounting, Financial Management, Income Tax, Service Tax, Advanced Accounting, Business Law, Auditing, etc. These should be more than sufficient in terms of knowledge level discussed in point (1) above or career changes discussed in points (2), (4) above or online assignments discussed in point (3) above.
Accounting is a global requirement. If you have plans to go abroad, CA qualification is a good base to start. Though accounting standards vary from country to country, the world is slowly moving towards to a uniform accounting model. A professional body like ICAI (Institute of Chartered Accountants of India) is not oblivious to this trend. The course content takes care of this in part. Further differences can be bridged at appropriate stage. The accounting principles are same across the world – it is just the standards that vary. One can easily make the transition should the need arise

CA qualification is an ideal addition to your resume for growth in career. However it is a tough course. The pass percentage in 2013 CA (both groups) was 10% This statistic is not to scare you but to tell you the other side i.e. the high standards ICAI sets in conferring CA qualification. This is what gives credence to CA qualification. It is not a degree conferred by regular university with pass percentage requirement of 35% CA qualification is a hard-earned professional qualification and once you acquire it, your current employer and future recruiters will know that you are among the cream of finance professionals in the country. Irrespective of whether you plan to continue in banking sector or switch to another industry, if you desire to be counted among the best in the field of financial analysis and credit appraisal, CA qualification si your best bet.