The Financial Risk Manager (FRM) is a globally recognized professional certification for individuals to gain and highlight their expertise in the domain of financial risk management across varying industries. The role of an FRM is relevant across all types of businesses – majorly banks, financial institutions, corporates, and investment firms. Such relevancy, along with its scope of growth, is what makes the course highly demanded by students. However, if you aspire to pursue it, there are several things you should know about the program before enrolling.
What Is the FRM Qualification Useful For?
The current era of businesses sees them suffering from repeated global financial disruptions, regulatory tightening, and increasing market volatility. This is what leads to the need for a professional FRM who can not only analyze returns but also anticipate risks and tackle them.
For finance aspirants, the FRM tends to be a great course to build value for their careers, not just in banks but in every business that deals with fintech, asset management, corporate treasury, currency, commodity, or interest rate exposure. The practical applications of what an individual learns in the curriculum of this exam through the FRM online classes in the finance world include:
- Measuring market risk using models like Value at Risk (VaR)
- Evaluating credit exposure and default probabilities
- Understanding regulatory capital requirements
- Managing operational and liquidity risks in large institutions
FRM Eligibility Criteria
Like many other exams, there is no specific stream you must have pursued in your 12th class to pursue FRM. All that is required is that the candidate must have passed the 12th standard. However, candidates typically benefit if they have a basic understanding of finance and statistics and are familiar with quantitative concepts and financial markets.
While you can appear for the exam, it is required that you gain at least two years of professional work experience within five years of completing the FRM Part 2. The relevant roles whose work experience may be counted include:
- Risk analysis or risk modeling
- Trading, portfolio management, or treasury functions
- Audit, compliance, or financial supervision
FRM Exam Pattern
The FRM exam is divided into two sequential parts, each designed to test different levels of risk management understanding. Additionally, both exams are conducted in a computer-based format and are offered twice a year.
FRM Part 1
The FRM Part 1 analyzes the foundational concepts of risk management and focuses on the tools and concepts used to assess financial risk. The core areas of the exam that are important for all aspirants to study include:
- Foundations of risk management
- Quantitative analysis
- Financial markets and products
- Valuation and risk models
FRM Part 2
While part 1 of the FRM exam focuses on foundational concepts of risk management, part 2 of the exam highlights your expertise in advanced risk management applications, shifting from theory to practical implementation of risk frameworks. After clearing part 1, an FRM student needs to understand that part 2 reflects senior risk management responsibilities. Its key focus areas include:
- Market, credit, and liquidity risk management
- Operational and enterprise risk
- Risk management in investment management
- Current issues in financial markets
Career Benefits After FRM Certification
The primary benefit of why individuals go for an FRM certification is the global credibility it brings to a risk management professional. In a world where every business or market faces some form of uncertainty, the FRM certification shows one’s expertise in risk management and makes them highly employable. The following are some benefits such a qualification will make you see:
- Career opportunities in the role of financial risk manager, credit risk analyst, market risk analyst, risk consultant, or advisory professional
- Industries that value FRM certification include commercial and investment banks, asset management and hedge funds, insurance companies, regulatory bodies, and consulting firms
- Salary and role boost with faster progression into senior roles
- Long-term career stability in regulated financial environments
Conclusion
Along with the strong alignment to real-world risk practices, regulatory frameworks, and institutional decision-making, FRM’s curriculum prepares you with practical risk expertise. Hence, considering the present as well as the future finance market, pursuing an FRM course is safe as well as highly rewarding for your career, making the qualification worthy of your time, money, and efforts.
If you are an aspirant looking for a professional career in financial risk management and wish to pursue FRM, then Fintelligents is the best place to put forward the first step of your preparation. We at Fintelligents have experience training 3,000+ students over the last 9 years of our functioning, with a faculty of experts training them with the best preparation strategies.
Enroll at Fintelligents for your FRM preparation course, online or offline, and give rise to a remarkable career in risk management.
FAQs
Q. Is the FRM course easy?
No, the FRM course is not easy but is rather considered very tough as for its difficulty level. This difficulty level is the result of the requirement of strong quantitative skills, practical application, and disciplined study. However, with consistency and dedication in your preparation for a long period, cracking the exam won’t feel so tough.
Q. Can I do FRM without graduation?
Yes, you are eligible to do FRM without graduation, as the course only requires you to be a class 12th pass candidate and hold relevant work experience for certification.
Q. How many marks to pass FRM?
There is no fixed number of marks or cutoff to pass FRM. This is because the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) uses a scaled system. Generally, it is recommended that you write correct answers for 50-60% of the questions and get a percentile of over 70% to pass the exam.
Q. What are the jobs after FRM?
The jobs after FRM that you can get your hands on include the roles of a risk analyst, credit risk analyst, market risk analyst, risk manager, and chief risk officer.
