I graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur with a major in engineering. However, I was more interested in applied mathematics and wanted to pursue a career as an actuary so started taking a few exams. My actuarial exams helped me secure a role as an intern with HSBC in their market risk reporting division in Bangalore, India, which soon turned into a full-time position. While I was at HSBC, I enjoyed working in the areas of market and counterparty risk and decided that I wanted to pursue a career in risk. I registered and obtained my FRM certification. 

At this time, my mentor from HSBC's counterparty risk analytics team was working his way through the Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF) program and he spoke highly of the curriculum. I had a chance to move from risk reporting into his team and I found a few gaps in my knowledge of quantitative finance. Naturally, I wanted to address them. I considered pausing my career to pursue a master's degree, but I enjoyed my work and was deriving a lot of learning from it. Hence, I decided to take up CQF certification on the recommendation of my mentor. The program gave me the flexibility to work along with gaining some core quant finance competencies.

I found the CQF curriculum very topical and I benefitted from the course primers, which provided a good warm-up before the start of the first module of the course. The CQF classes and material were very well-paced and I managed to move to a role with Nomura in their counterparty risk analytics team in Mumbai, India during the program. After completing the program and obtaining my distinction in the final exam, I kept myself updated with the vast library of CQF's Lifelong Learning.  I have enjoyed the lectures from both the CQF faculty and the guest speakers. I have also reviewed the latest cohort modules and found the lectures in data science and counterparty risk to be very relevant to the current market. 

My knowledge of risk topics and quant finance helped me land a role with Credit Suisse Mumbai in their Enterprise Risk Management team, where I had a mandate to work on the methodology development of economic risk capital models. With my expertise in quantitative risk, I moved into a challenging role in consulting with EY London in their quantitative advisory services (market risk), where I had an opportunity to work with multiple high-profile banks in their risk and finance divisions, with a focus on the areas of risk model review, model validation, and model audit. Recently, I have taken on a new role as a business risk officer with Citi, focusing on quality assurance in the first line of defense and I am sure that the learning I have undertaken throughout the years will help me in my new role.

For prospective students who want to pursue careers in quant risk, I would recommend the CQF program highly. Quant risk is an evolving field and one needs to be aware of current regulatory requirements and be comfortable and competent with the latest skill set required. A dynamic program like the CQF, which is up-to-date, flexible, and taught by industry professionals, is very helpful in addressing the need of students who want to join the exciting world of quant finance.