Professional certification from SIIA/FISD will establish your credentials in the increasingly complex and competitive financial information industry. The Financial Information Associate (FIA) certification is the first formal accreditation for market and reference data practitioners and will only be awarded to those who pass this newly formulated examination.

Get Trained by Screen Consultants
Screen Consultants have cooperated closely with the FISD in conceiving, developing and providing the certification training courses. For candidates who are interested in becoming a certified market & reference data specialist, Screen Consultants offer tailor-made courses which are designed to prepare for the Certification Exam. For more information about these training courses and dates, please contact us >>

This Level One Certification is designed for candidates who are relatively new to the industry (typically between 1 and 3 years of experience), and who seek to establish a robust and comprehensive foundation for their career in the financial services industry.

Candidates
The training courses for the Financial Information Associate Certification programme enable you to acquire relevant knowledge in a structured and rigorous format.  Preparing for Certification will help you obtain clear direction for your further career development while the Certification itself will provide a formal recognition of the level of knowledge you will have acquired.

The Financial Information Associate Certification programme is aimed at candidates who are either relatively new to their careers in this industry (one to three years experience) or who are not directly involved in this sector but who want to gain a better understanding of it. Having said that, if you have more extensive experience you may wish to test yourself, not least because no such certification existed until recently. Similarly, if you only just started in this sector and you are willing to study hard (and get some help from experienced practitioners), you may want to follow the training programme and take the test.

Key Benefits:
• Gain a very broad overview of the many dimenions of the financial services industry
• Understand what subjects are most important in our sector of the financial industry
• Understand and speak the language of your colleagues around you
• Be recognized and valued by current and future potential employers
   - Improve your prospects for advancement in your current organization
   - Make yourself attractive to employers from other organizations

Employers
The Financial Information Associate Certification programme enables you to give clear direction and encouragement to your staff so they can develop their knowledge and skills.   In addition, it provides you with an industry-wide recognized certification programme for the assessment of relevant knowledge, whether for existing staff or for potentially new employees.

If you are an employer within the Financial Services industry these new certification training courses will be a useful complement to your current Training & Development Programme, while being an attractive benefit for new employees.

Key benefits:
• Provide an additional option to your current staff for self-development
• Achieve greater productivity from your current staff
• Increase motivation amongst your current staff
• Improve the effectiveness of your recruitment process:
   - Identify skilled candidates more easily
   - Recruit better staff, with more appropriate knowledge

Syllabus
At the heart of the Financial Information Associate Certification programme is an industry defined Syllabus describing the knowledge set required, as well as a rigorous and secure test regime.  It will stretch candidates and give true credibility and value to every certificate awarded. The FIA Syllabus was developed by 25 industry subject matter experts drawn from user firms, vendors and exchanges. The Syllabus is constructed around four core subject groupings:

• The Markets: The different types of financial or commodity instruments that are traded, the different types of firm and the different job functions within those firms
• The Data: The multitude of types of data and the variety of vendors who market and sell such data
• The Technology: How the data is delivered, distributed, stored, validated, massaged and enhanced
• Industry Issues & Trends: Changes and influences that have occurred in recent times

The detailed syllabus is available for anyone to download here.