The Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA) announced Monday that it will offer an online education program through the MIT Sloan School of Management leading to its CIMA certification beginning June 1. The Sloan School joins three other leading business schools that are offering the in-person education component for CIMA certification: the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University (added in 2014); the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (added in 2012); and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Peter Hirst, executive director at MIT Sloan Executive Education, said in a statement that "By offering this program online, we are providing a much-needed solution to today's time-constrained financial advisors and consultants, while still providing them with access to some of the brightest financial minds in the world." Among those minds will be Sloan Professor Andrew Lo, who will serve as the new program's faculty advisor.
In addition to his work on hedge funds and risk management, Lo is the director of MIT's Laboratory for Financial Engineering (LFE), which is conducting a $1 million, three-year behavioral finance study on how best to create individual benchmarks for investors funded by, and using data from, Natixis Global Asset Management.
Sean Walters, executive director and CEO of IMCA, said in a statement that the agreement "increases access to high quality education for advisors seeking to distinguish their expertise in today's global and highly sophisticated marketplace."
