What is the career path for a CFA?

The career path for a chartered financial analyst (CFA) includes jobs as a research analyst, portfolio manager, and consultant. Becoming a CFA is extremely time-consuming and difficult. It can take four years of education, six months of exam preparation for each exam, and over 300 hours of studying, but it is extremely worthwhile for certain career paths.

You should become a Chartered Finance Analyst (CFA) because it gives you the ability to gain expertise in quantitative methods, investment analysis, economics, financial reporting, and portfolio management, and it also ramps up your analytical skills in a broad manner.

How To Become A Chartered Finance Analyst: What It Is and Career Path

What is a chartered finance analyst and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Miguel Vicens

The average chartered finance analyst salary is $73,157. The most common degree is a bachelor's degree degree with an finance major. It usually takes 2-4 years of experience to become a chartered finance analyst. Chartered finance analysts with a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification earn more money. Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 9% and produce 31,900 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to a chartered finance analyst?

Miguel Vicens

Associate Dean of School of Business, Associate Professor of Finance, Western New Mexico University

The labor market environment these days is characterized by flexibility, credentials, and ethics. As a Finance major, your job is to help make sense of the critical financial situation in which we find ourselves these days. The Finance job market has changed since the great recession in 2008, to incorporate some of your other courses such as management. Most of the jobs you will find will have a management component, due to the importance of human interactions, strategic management perspectives, and overall long-term orientation.

ScoreChartered Finance AnalystUS Average

Salary

5.7

Avg. Salary $73,157

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

5.8

Growth rate 9%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.10%

Asian 14.09%

Black or African American 5.64%

Hispanic or Latino 7.67%

Unknown 4.50%

White 68.00%

Gender

female 10.39%

male 89.61%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

5.8

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.4

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.3

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a chartered finance analyst

Explore chartered finance analyst education requirements

Most common chartered finance analyst degrees

Bachelor's

76.7 %

Master's

20.0 %

Doctorate

1.7 %

Start to develop specific chartered finance analyst skills

Skills	Percentages
CFA	38.65%
Financial Statements	24.76%
Web-Parts	7.70%
SQL Server	6.70%
Templates	6.33%

Complete relevant chartered finance analyst training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New chartered finance analysts learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a chartered finance analyst based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real chartered finance analyst resumes.

Research chartered finance analyst duties and responsibilities

Develop, maintain financial models/applications (VBA Excel/Access) to automate and streamline business processes and perform financial analysis.
Document formatting/printing/production anomalies produce by new CMS.
Proofread final drafts of post migration hard copy character-by-character, ensuring correctness.
Present findings and analysis to executive level management and work collaboratively with management in decision making processes regarding the asset portfolio.

Prepare your chartered finance analyst resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your chartered finance analyst resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a chartered finance analyst resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable chartered finance analyst resume templates

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