I work in FP&A for a F500 and am planning to take level 1 of the CFA® next June. I'm contemplating whether or not I should ask my boss if the company will cover the fees, because it may send a message that I'm planning to leave the company since the CFA® isn't directly related to corporate finance/FP&A/accounting.
Any thoughts or knowledge on someone in corporate finance getting sponsorship for the CFA®? Any advice on whether it's worth asking to have it covered?
My company only sponsors the CPA and/or an MBA. Not the CFA.
Rare but does happen.
I interned at an F500 who sponsored the CFA 100%. Only catch was that they only sponsored you if you worked in a specific department (investment management, FP&A, and treasury).
Looks like a simple expected value problem to me.
(1) What's the risk that your manager is going to begin looking at some other candidate if you inform him of your CFA plans? For the purpose of this discussion, let's call it 50%. (You can adjust the percentage since you obviously have more information than I do). That means the probability that he will not care is 50%.
(1) (Optional) Technically, we should put an intermediate step here, in which we say: 'If he doesn't care, will the Company actually offer financial support? What is the percentage chance of that occurring?' But that gets into a whole conditional probability scenario that I'm entirely too lazy for right now.
(2) Now, what is the benefit to you of the Company's support? The ~$1,000 it costs to take the CFA Level I examination. As specified in (1), there's a 50% of actually realizing that support, so in expected value terms, that's +$500 on the side of asking your boss.
(3) What is the downside? Let's say he starts looking for someone else and comes up with a reason to kick you to the curb in say, 3 months. Assume that if you hadn't told him, you'd be in this job for another year. That 9 months of income -- let's just call it $45,000 -- is your downside. Since you could buy a car today at 0% interest, I'm just going to assume our discount rate is 0% -- I mean, why work in finance if you're not going to get a nice car out of it? There's a 50% chance of this happening, so the downside to you in EV terms is $22,500.
(Of course, getting fired/forced out would lead to other negative (and positive) monetary consequences, but the best models are simple. We continue on this road).
Thus, the negative expected value is ($22,000), which doesn't really seem worth it to me.
Obviously, you would need to question the assumptions of my framework. For one, the downside scenario was exceedingly harsh. Would your boss really kick you to the curb in three months? Probably not -- he probably couldn't even be allowed to. It also depends on your risk aversion and the number of giveafucks you have for your current job.
Tweak the model as necessary. Come back to us with a decision. Thx.
They agreed to cover the fees. Sure am glad I asked.
Atomic - a couple of those points crossed my mind, but I realized the chances of losing my job over asking the question was very close to 0% (if not 0), so I figured I had nothing to lose by asking.
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