These are the firms that will employ you with a CFA

You’ve spent a minimum of 900 hours getting through all three CFA exams (assuming you passed first time), and want to know how it will bolster your career prospects. Part of this is pay, part of this is career progression, but it’s also worth knowing which firms value the qualification the most.

Helpfully, the CFA Institute has provided us with the main employers of CFA charterholders globally, and across EMEA and the UK.

J.P. Morgan, which of course has a huge asset management arm, UBS (which is refocusing on wealth management) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are the three largest employers of CFA charterholders globally.

Across EMEA, UBS and Credit Suisse are the biggest employers, but as this doesn’t apply in the UK, our assumption is that this is largely people working in wealth and asset management in Switzerland.

In the UK, it’s again J.P. Morgan in first, but local banks Barclays and HSBC make up the remainder of the top three with Blackrock coming in fourth.