Certified Portfolio Manager at Allensbach University

What are the admission requirements?

Admission requirements are a first professionally qualifying university degree with a focus on economics or relevant training and further education as well as professional experience in finance.

What credits are possible?

If you have already completed a continuing education course or have achieved comparable work at another university, it is possible to receive credit or recognition for the university certificate. We will be happy to check for you individually which credits or recognitions we can offer you. Talk to our student advisory service!

How is your course structured?

Your course comprises two modules, each of which concludes with an assignment:

Portfolio Management (5 ECTS)

You will look at the three basic forms on which investments are based and learn methods for measuring the capital growth that can be achieved with them. You will look for the safe investment and find a spectrum of 16 risk classes, whereby you will see that although some individual risks cancel each other out by mixing risks, the context between return and risk remains. You will deal with the treatment of risk premiums, take a critical look at the history of returns over the last century and consider financial investments and their prices from a theoretical and practical perspective. Furthermore, price level differences and their determinants are discussed. Finally, they deal with credit-financed investments, taking inflationary influences into account, as well as effects in the context of portfolio transactions.

Performance analysis in practice (10 ECTS)

You will gain an insight into the different types of investors and their possible objectives as well as any restrictions that need to be taken into account. In this context, you will learn about the characteristics of professional asset managers and the various investment philosophies. You will be familiar with active and passive management approaches and their underlying assumptions about the efficiency of the capital markets. You will also be familiar with the objectives of internal and external performance measurement and the differences between the two approaches. You will also learn methods for measuring performance. You will be able to determine the performance of funds and will be able to apply various adjustment procedures in the case of distributions. You will be able to calculate the active return by looking at the performance relative to the benchmark.

You will be familiar with the possible uses of indices in portfolio management, the requirements for appropriate benchmarks and the different types of benchmarks. You will have an overview of the most important equity, bond and money market indices and will be able to differentiate between the various forms of construction and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages. You will also gain an insight into the principles and objectives of attribution analysis and the valuation of bonds and be able to apply these.

In the last part of the module, you will deal with the Global Investment Performance Standards. These international standards for reporting management performance (e.g. in presentations) are intended to ensure comparability. This is intended to prevent the possibility of manipulation or misleading information for (potential) investors. In addition to specifications for calculating and reporting return benchmarks, you will also learn about specifications for calculating risk indicators. Comparison using appropriate benchmarks is also covered. Finally, you will learn about external performance measures. The aim of these is to assess whether added value has been created after costs from an investor's perspective.

The entire university certificate comprises 15 ECTS.

How long will your studies take?

The standard period of study is six months. You can extend the duration of your studies by a further six months free of charge.