Certificate Program in Financial Engineering (CPFE^®)

Financial Engineering Courses (CPFE) prepare students for technically sophisticated jobs with financial institutions, financial service providers, financial consulting services and financial software companies. The program is intended for students seeking comprehensive technical knowledge of vanilla and exotic derivatives pricing, hedging, trading and investment strategies and portfolio management in equity, currency, interest rates, credit and mortgages.

CPFE is a short-term course that requires seven months of study for the core modules, which makes it attractive to students with strong quantitative skills who are willing to make a quick head start in the investment finance industry. The applied nature of the program implies the fact that there is great emphasis in it to impart the practical implementation skills and techniques that are actually used by practitioners in top financial institutions in the industry, so a considerable part of the course time is devoted to teaching implementation skills along with rigorous theoretical discourse.

As an applied discipline, financial institutions look for the following skill sets in the candidates for positions in their Quant teams :
- Strong quantitative background
- Sound knowledge of the underlying financial theories
- Very good implementation skills

This Financial Engineering course is designed specifically to meet these exact needs. This is a course on modelling and applications of mathematics, statistics and econometrics in investment finance. The program covers all the technical and quantitative aspects of investment finance used in top financial institutions.

The combination of skills imparted through this program viz. understanding of complex financial theories, rigorous exposure to the underlying mathematical and statistical theories, practical financial modeling ability and computer implementation proficiency, is in high demand in the industry, and which the employers do not generally find in graduates of standard MBA or financial engineering programs.

Modern Investment Finance is hugely dependent on the implementations of the theories and techniques of financial engineering. Financial Engineering, or Quantitative Finance as it is alternately known, is a multidisciplinary field involving the application of theories from financial economics, physics, mathematics, probability, statistics, operations research and econometrics using the methods and tools of engineering and the practice of computer programming to solve the problems of Investment Finance.

Generally the language of choice for Quant implementations traditionally has been C++ along with tools like Matlab, Mathematica, Stata, etc. However, of late the Python language has become more popular.

Financial Engineering has emerged as a very prospective career prospect for people with a strong mathematical background like those coming from engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics or econometrics background. The best of the global financial institutions like Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, etc. hire people having strong quantitative skills for “Quant” jobs. This is also a very rewarding and exciting career option for such people as there is ample scope for applying their numerical and creative skills to design new things, be it devising new investment strategies or be it structuring new financial instruments or be it finding methods to value them. They are continuously competing with their peers and some of the best minds in the market and have to out-perform them to generate superior returns, which is intellectually a very challenging work, and this makes it all the more thrilling.

Modern Investment Management has become very much mathematical and statistical in nature, it is now much more of science than arts, specially where investments in complex financial instruments and complex trading/investment strategies are concerned. That is the reason that high-end investment firms that invest in derivatives are opting for people who have strong quantitative skills for structuring or valuation of complex financial instruments and for devicing superior investment strategies.

This has opened up very exciting and rewarding career opportunities in the field of Quantitative Investment Management for candidates who come with academic background in engineering, mathematics, and other numerical specializations. Needless to say, that apart from the stimulating intectual challenges that careers in this field offer to the mathematically talented individuals, the compensations are quite handsome indeed.

The course prepares candidates for careers as quantitative investment managers or quantitative analysts with financial institutions like investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, large broking houses, investment research and analytics firms, etc.

Candidates having a strong numerical background have a very bright chance of making a very rewarding career in this field with the largest of investment banks and other financial institutions. Salaries of quantitative analysts vary depending on their experience and background. In India presently, salaries for this profile may range from 8 Lacs p.a. for freshers to 30 Lacs p.a. for candidates with a few years of experience.

Students successfully completing best Financial Engineering online courses will get placement assistance subject to fulfilment of applicable conditions.