[Anonymous]

Originally Posted by QXP

Hate to break it to you, when I meant financial modeling, I’m not talking about stuff like Black Scholes, that’s just a simple calculator that any junior accountant can whack just by grabbing a few key assumptions from Bloomberg.

While I don’t have direct experience in modeling, the few I have examples I have seen constructed are very complicated and requires not only mathematical and programming skills, but also a deep understanding of the principles behind the bank’s assessment of VAR as well as compliance to the usual Basel stuff.

A lot of risk management guys are fully qualified actuaries and actuarial certification itself on average takes about 7 years to complete if you are studying while working. Deep stuff I wouldn’t want to go to. It is definitely not something you can smoke your way out with rudimentary Finance knowledge and throwing out a few sexy key words.

PS: All above refers to the "real" risk management job that pays the "real" money, normal BO jops under the risk department that are more tracking, reporting and compliance in nature is of course far easier to get.

Hmm... my friend who is working on his actuarial certification told me stochastic calculus (continuous) is more difficult.