hen Daniel Chornous, CFA, attended his 25th college reunion, a fellow finance major asked him, “Do you ever work with any of the stuff they taught us in school?” Chornous had to laugh. As chief investment officer of RBC Asset Management, he had just devoted an entire day to developing a capital asset pricing model summary. Although his undergraduate years provided a nuts-and-bolts foundation for his investment career, Chornous says that the focused knowledge gained through the CFA Program is what he and others at his firm fall back on every day to do their jobs.

		Daniel Chornous, CFA, is chief investment officer of RBC Asset Management, one of Canada’s largest money managers. RBC supports candidates’ efforts by providing time off to study and reimbursing CFA Program expenses.

     Chornous is responsible for the overall direction of investment policy and fund management at RBC Asset Management, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Canada. With over C$53 billion (US$42 billion) in assets under management and offices in Toronto, Montreal, London, and Hong Kong, RBC Asset Management is one of Canada’s largest money managers. Chornous also chairs the RBC Investment Strategy Committee, the group responsible for global asset-mix recommendations and global fixed-income and equity portfolio construction for use in RBC Investments’ key client groups.
     His lofty roles notwithstanding, Chornous still sees himself as a hands-on investment practitioner.
     “I’m responsible for the guidance of the investment policy and fund management process. But, I’m an analyst. I’ve been an analyst for 25 years. So, that guidance is with a capital ‘G.’ I run my own models, I have my own views and I have my own return expectations,” says Chornous, who works closely with his investment management staff to establish appropriate strategies and monitor performance of the firm’s mutual funds, pooled funds, and separately managed portfolios.
     Chornous’ talented investment staff includes portfolio managers, analysts, and traders whose respective expertise and skill are the products of diverse educations and experiences. Yet Chornous and roughly half of his investment staff pursued the CFA charter to “properly qualify” themselves for the business, he says.
     “This stuff isn’t intuitive, and I don’t believe everything can be learned on a trading floor. You can learn a heck of a lot on a trading floor, and eventually, you have got to get down there. You can’t learn to play hockey from a book. But there are elements of this business that are better taught and learned in the classic fashion of the CFA Program,” he says.
     To be successful, Chornous’ investment staff draws on the technical skills addressed in the CFA Program curriculum, as well as on a thorough understanding of finance theory, which also is a focus of the program.
     “I’ve got this real simple view and that is you do your worrying first, whether it’s in stock selection or risk management,” explains Chornous. “That requires a lot of number grinding. But whatever your investment discipline, you must have a strong theoretical base to keep you on the right track. You know what you’re looking for, you run the data and you eliminate those things that don’t fit. It’s minimizing the losses that really makes a big difference, and a lot of that know-how is textbook finance.”
     Chornous points out that going through the CFA Program also brings awareness of industry standards and best practices.
     “Investment professionals should know what best practices are and aim for them personally,” says Chornous, who notes that an important part of his job is “making sure that we are really fulfilling our obligations [to our clients], doing our best at managing risk and are progressive in compliance. There’s no reason not to embrace this stuff — it makes a better business.”
     For those interested in starting careers, or who are new to the investment industry, Chornous cannot stress enough the opportunity the CFA Program offers in terms of building knowledge.
     “It’s not getting the CFA [charter] that counts,” says Chornous, who advises against efforts to shortcut the program. “Sure, it’s a pain to study all the material, but the payoff is in the studying.”
     He also believes there’s an advantage to pursuing the CFA Program after college. In his own experience, and for many of the junior analysts he has hired, studying the curriculum when it is relevant to one’s day-to-day tasks helps to embed that knowledge so that it becomes “the way you think,” he explains.
     Chornous so strongly believes the CFA Program Body of Knowledge to be critical to RBC Asset Management’s “brain power” that he expects entry-level hires to enroll in the program shortly after joining the company. RBC Asset Management supports candidates’ efforts by providing time off to study and after passing an exam level, candidates also are reimbursed CFA Program expenses.
     Still, says Chornous: “I truly have some excellent people working for me who made different choices, and they shouldn’t be stigmatized for not going after the CFA charter.”
     But for people new to the industry, he feels that the CFA charter is a must-have.
     “The investment management business is not an easy business to get into, it’s not an easy business to survive in, and it requires a tremendous amount of personal commitment. Why wouldn’t you want to properly qualify yourself?” challenges Chornous.