The International Securities Market Association (ISMA), Chisholm Roth and the ISMA Centre at the University of Reading says the distance learning version of their International Fixed Income and Derivatives (IFID) qualification is selling well in the UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, India, South Africa, Japan and – wait for it – the Dominican Republic.
The IFID qualification is the distance learning version of the widely recognised ISMA professional certificate programme, which has run for 30 years. ISMA claims its certificate has set the international standard of professional competence for the fixed income market, and been widely adopted as a benchmark by market information vendors, accountants, legal firms and software houses servicing the securities industry.
Previously, the certificate was available only through participation in a one week residential programme run by ISMA, but now through the development of e-learning techniques by Chisholm Roth it is available globally. The qualification is primarily intended for fixed income analysts, asset managers, traders and sales people during the first two years of their career in the industry, but is open to anyone looking for a more comprehensive knowledge of the fixed income and derivatives market. It has been widely adopted as a benchmark by market information vendors, accountants, legal firms and software houses servicing the securities industry.
“We have been delighted with the positive take up by market professionals of our distance learning certificate,” says John L. Langton, Chief Executive and Secretary General of ISMA. “It demonstrates that the desire for the qualification remains strong and with new technology even more people than before to participate.”
Professor Brian Scott Quinn, Director of the ISMA Centre at Reading University adds that “as financial services companies become increasingly global, many of them have difficulty introducing a degree of educational uniformity throughout across their workforce. The task of bringing teams together for face-to-face training is expensive and time consuming. This alternative e-learning option is easy to access any time, and can be integrated into the internal training programmes of any firm across different centres.”
The distance learning IFID Certificate programme is an interactive process, offering students the opportunity to network with both tutors and peers via an online campus and to share experiences wherever they are; as a distance learning package, students can attain the qualification without taking time off work. Once registered for the on-line programme, students receive the IFID Study Pack to in their own time and at their own pace, with the support of e-tutors at the online campus and a moderated discussion board. They then have a maximum of 6 months to complete the programme, after which the Certificate exam can be taken at any one of more then 2,800 Thomson Prometric’s test centers worldwide.
“We have been devoted to developing effective training programmes for market professionals for over 15 years,” says Paul Roth, Managing Director and Founder of Chisholm Roth. “Our goal is to establish a qualification that is easily accessible, cost effective and at the same time internationally respected and recognised; our latest offering created in partnership with ISMA and The ISMA Centre is a real breakthrough and offers the financial services industry the very latest in both course content and technological delivery.”
Chisholm Roth is a financial market training company based in London, with affiliates in New York and Brussels. It was founded in 1989.