Risk Latte's Certificate in Financial Engineering (CFE)

[Andy Nguyen]

Rahul,
Glad you decided to sign up and offer your side of the story.

I'll leave the legal matters to the parties involved and the lawyers to settle.

There are some questions that must be asked.

Both complains have mentioned about refund. Have the students been made clear at any point prior to sending out their payment about the refund policy? Are there any kind of contract being signed?

I have taken for granted about the way refund is handled in the US educational institutions. It's a pretty much black and white what to expect from the consumers. Even supermarkets post a HUGE refund policy near the cashier post. The consumer right protection laws in the US may be different from how it is done in Asia.

Also, if these two individuals are so hopelessly unqualified for the CFE courses, how did they get in? Don't you have some sort of FEAT test or procedure to filter out the weaklings?

Eligibility:
All participants selected through FEAT* (Financial Engineering Aptitude Test) and/or internal selection process of Risk Latte.
Early Enrollment:
Successful applications received before November 30, 2010 may be awarded a special discount in fees of 10% and may receive a waiver of the FEAT.

The internet is truly powerful. There are nothing you can hide from it. We are in a niche field and between Wilmott forum (80K+ members), Quantnet forum (12K+members), Dominic's LinkedIn groups (40K members), I think we reach out to just about everyone in this field.

I'm sure the truth is somewhere out there. And I hope the two students got back to us with their follow up responses.

 

[DominiConnor]

Thanks for that, I'd be glad to hear from your investor, one of the few privileges I have found for my position is something that I truly didn't expect. People actually go out of their way to avoid giving me the impression of something that is untrue. As a headhunter, I had expected it to be overwhelmingly the other way.
Of course they don't tell me everything, which is an issue.

Turns out that the scale of retribution I can cause to fall onto people's heads from mutliple directions combines with the fact that lying to your HH is like lying to your doctor. People do both of course, but it causes them unnecessary pain.

For the benefit of others reading this, I would like to point out that I am working 100% on what various people are telling me, and have absolutely no first hand facts at all. Existentially, I don't even know for a fact who is taking part in this discussion (yes, I am married to a big scary lawyer)

 

[DominiConnor]

Andy makes a very good point about refunds, one that embarasses me slightly since I never have anything to do with the financial side of the course I teach on, must find out what the policy is, no one has ever raised it anywhere near me.

 

[sycurve]

Thanks, Andy for your comment. Also, thanks for the Nuclearphynance post that you made and your comment on the "ripoff".

The refund policy is very well articulated by us so I don't want to go into any details here and everybody who enrolls is well aware of it. Besides, all paperwork, emails, notes, invoices, etc. are there for record which clearly states what are the terms and conditions.

From the look of your face, it is obvious that you are an Asian (you may be living in the States or born and brought up there but that doesn't change anything). Asia is quite advanced in terms of regulations, law and order and rules. We were hoping that the financial crisis would be a wake up call for many in the West to finally come to terms with their ignorance. It seems people are still ignorant about many things, especially the most important fact of business life: Asia is healthy, honest and racing ahead of the rest of the world in all matters, including business regulatory matters. There's more discipline and ethics in Asia than there is in the West.

As for the question of FEAT: FEAT is still at the experimental stage and I am not sure if you have had a chance to look at it. FEAT has been developed by myself and a few of my friends (mostly computer scientists and mathematicians who studied with me) and it is inspired from GLAT (Google Lab Aptitude Test). Eventually, we do want to popularize FEAT and so far have only selectively administered this test.

As I said that there is no bigger idiot on this planet than myself. I enrolled Rajan out of sympathy, his father's pleading (and even his persistent phone calls) and another very important reason which is best left unsaid. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to have at least one university graduate in our class (we have none - all our students are working professionals).

And as for Mukul Goyal, what can I say. We've have many 30 to 45 minutes long distance phone calls in all of which he seemed very keen on the course. In fact, he said he was very keen on C++ and other programming languages and wanted to really pick up the quant side of things. He had a very good qualifications on paper and was working in a somewhat related area (valuations) and hence we decided to enroll him.

Mukul Goyal and Rajan should come forward and disclose who their respective classmates are in New York and Mumbai and how those students are responding to the course, content, quality and above all the delivery of the course and schedule. These are all bankers and investment bankers (unfortunately, I don't think they visit your forum at all and only a few of them visit Wilmott's forum sometimes).

You'd be surprised to know, Andy, how many quants, traders, derivatives sales professionals, fund managers and others in the field of finance and banking never visit your forums at all and in fact, have never ever visited Wilmott's forum as well.

 

[DominiConnor]

I fear your statements about honesty as applied to the PRC and other Asian nations undermine your position a little.

I also see no reason to snipe at Andy's work on this site. He did not say that QN reached all people in this line of work, but that between my social networking groups (which are now rather over 85,000), Wilmott.com and QN, most people come by, at least occasionally.

Obviously the three sets overlap, but we are talking easily >120,000, proabably more like 150K.
I don't know QN numbers but Wilmott.com and the reach of UCEM are growing by >1,000 per week.

Small compared to (say) programmers or chefs, but as someone who networks as a critical part of his job I have to inform you that you are mistaken if you think we aren't the majority in this particular niche.

This spring Bloomberg tried to sell my firm their terminals, and I took along a sample output from the UCEM and it transpired that for every quant they had on their system, I had more than 4, and that doesn't include Wilmott.com or QN. If I had to guess I'd reckon that QN now has more quants on it than Bloomberg.

QN is growing, as are the other two, and I really do fail to see what Andy's ethnicity has to do with anything. Am I the next to be racially stereotyped ?

People have gone there before...

 

[helpteye]

Thanks, Andy for your comment. Also, thanks for the Nuclearphynance post that you made and your comment on the "ripoff".

The refund policy is very well articulated by us so I don't want to go into any details here and everybody who enrolls is well aware of it. Besides, all paperwork, emails, notes, invoices, etc. are there for record which clearly states what are the terms and conditions.

From the look of your face, it is obvious that you are an Asian (you may be living in the States or born and brought up there but that doesn't change anything). Asia is quite advanced in terms of regulations, law and order and rules. We were hoping that the financial crisis would be a wake up call for many in the West to finally come to terms with their ignorance. It seems people are still ignorant about many things, especially the most important fact of business life: Asia is healthy, honest and racing ahead of the rest of the world in all matters, including business regulatory matters. There's more discipline and ethics in Asia than there is in the West.

As for the question of FEAT: FEAT is still at the experimental stage and I am not sure if you have had a chance to look at it. FEAT has been developed by myself and a few of my friends (mostly computer scientists and mathematicians who studied with me) and it is inspired from GLAT (Google Lab Aptitude Test). Eventually, we do want to popularize FEAT and so far have only selectively administered this test.

As I said that there is no bigger idiot on this planet than myself. I enrolled Rajan out of sympathy, his father's pleading (and even his persistent phone calls) and another very important reason which is best left unsaid. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to have at least one university graduate in our class (we have none - all our students are working professionals).

And as for Mukul Goyal, what can I say. We've have many 30 to 45 minutes long distance phone calls in all of which he seemed very keen on the course. In fact, he said he was very keen on C++ and other programming languages and wanted to really pick up the quant side of things. He had a very good qualifications on paper and was working in a somewhat related area (valuations) and hence we decided to enroll him.

Mukul Goyal and Rajan should come forward and disclose who their respective classmates are in New York and Mumbai and how those students are responding to the course, content, quality and above all the delivery of the course and schedule. These are all bankers and investment bankers (unfortunately, I don't think they visit your forum at all and only a few of them visit Wilmott's forum sometimes).

You'd be surprised to know, Andy, how many quants, traders, derivatives sales professionals, fund managers and others in the field of finance and banking never visit your forums at all and in fact, have never ever visited Wilmott's forum as well.

What in the world does the Look of his face have to do with anything? Because of that statement alone, I will never consider CFE even if it was the last program left on earth. I do not want to have intellectual exchanges with anyone who says: "from the look of your face.....blah blah blah" I would not hear the rest. I think it is a very ignorant thing to say escpecially for a highly educated person.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Rahul is right that there are many quants, traders and others in finance never heard of Quantnet, let alone visit our site. We are serving a small segment of the quant finance field which is education in financial engineering.

The site's and my personal mission is to make sure that anyone ever thinking of doing an MFE degree, or any kind of quant training, either online, at school, in US, Asia, Europe or anywhere would have found out about Quantnet, come here and get all the information, tools and resources they need.

Rahul also makes me realize that I have much work to do to achieve my mission. And I guess I would just have to work harder at it. Everyone interested in knowing more about the history of Quantnet, here is a piece on 10 Fun Quantnet Facts You May Not Know

At the same time, I'm comforted a tiny bit in the knowledge that this aforementioned group of "quants, traders and others in finance have never ever visited Wilmott's forum as well". If they have not visited Wilmott, the quant finance forum that opens since 2003, there is little chance that they would have heard about Quantnet. Maybe they are a different audience than those Wilmott and Quantnet serve. The fact that Rahul knows about Quantnet, Wilmott, NuclearPhynance gives me hope that Quantnet is going on the right path to attract the people who is interested in Quant education.

I believe Risklatte website has great materials and I have nothing but respect for the work they do there. I have no first hand knowledge of their CFE course and this discussion is the perfect place where we can learn more about it, hear from people who took it.

 

[coolharvard]

I personally believe anything other than an actual degree is not useful.

I don't think a certiciate is going to help that much... and I don't know how you can learn programming in an 8-hour seminar.

 

[DominiConnor]

That's a valid position, but the point to grasp about qualifications is that managers are extremely diverse in what they look for. All you can do is play the averages.

I agree about programming, even in VBA.
On the programming bit of the CQF that I teach on, there is more than 8 hours on how to debug code, and that doesn't include actually writing any.

I have yet to form an proper opinion on the CFE.

 

[sycurve]

Dear Readers,

Here's something that we should make absolutely clear to all readers of this forum as well as all the students of financial engineering in and around New York City who are attending regular, full time University courses.

Certificate in Financial Engineering (CFE) run by Risk Latte is definitely NOT suitable for full time University and college students.

It is a course that is delivered 100% using Excel spreadsheet and covers all contemporary and advanced quantitative models that are actually being used by the trading & structuring / quants desks in top tier banks around the world. CFE modules (quant models, problems & solutions, exercises, Excel spreadsheet code of models, etc.). All advanced mathematics is implemented on Excel spreadsheet and very little time is spent in the class talking about mathematics and other abstractions / theory / theoretical concepts. We take a piece of math and implement it on an Excel spreadsheet and then go on to Product / Portfolio Engineering space. This is where the course is totally tailored towards bankers. A large number of exotic products are valued in the class using the models / quant methodologies implemented on Excel spreadsheet and risk tools (risk engineering) and portfolio optimization tools are discussed (once again using Excel spreadsheet).

For example: we spend a lot of time on how to calibrate models such as SABR, BGM, etc. and then do that calibration on Excel spreadsheet based on market data downloaded. Or, we spend a lot of time implementing American Monte Carlo (Longstaff-Schwarz model) and optimizing that model on Excel spreadsheet (for finding early exercise boundary) to price Bermudan swaptions and callable IR notes and then calibrate the whole process. This is done totally in Excel and the entire exercise in the class gets caught up in Excel spreadsheet implementation. Therefore, someone who comes to learn the theory / math behind SABR, BGM or Longstaff-Schwarz will be greatly disappointed and may event find this challenging.

The course is very advanced, very condensed and absolutely and totally practical. ALL course materials is prepared with the help of desk quants and traders in the banks. CFE is only suitable for practicing bankers. And above all the schedule is totally flexi-time. ALL class dates are set after mutual discussion and taking into account every student's travel and work schedule and a lot of changes are made (schedule is constantly changed) going forward. The only thing that remains constant is that within a span of around 6 to 7 months we are able to deliver 12 full days of classes and students are then required to make class presentations and project presentations. Sometimes a batch extends on to 8 months. And the classes are held only over weekends. The instructor flies to all the locations and delivers the sessions over weekends.

ALL (over 95%) our students in all the six locations (Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, London, New York and Mumbai) are traders, quants / structurers, risk managers, product controllers, derivatives sales professionals from top tier global banks and investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, RBS, UBS, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Barclays Capital, Standard Chartered, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, etc.). We would be more than happy to provide a full / sample list of our students and graduates to all those who want to know. You can always write to our students and find out more about our course. Our email is: info@risklatte.com.

If you are a full time student attending an University course in and around NYC and want to do a financial engineering course then please enroll for Wilmott / 7City course CQF. I am sure you will derive great value from that course.

All full time University and college students in and around NYC, please DO NOT enroll for our CFE course. Wilmott's CQF would be a much better alternative for you.

Thank you.
Rahul Bhattacharya
Course Director, CFE
Risk Latte Company
Hong Kong
+852 6395 8032
+852 3752 0619
Email: info@risklatte.com
Web: www.risklatte.com

 

[mugoyal]

My Final Response

Hi Guys,

I would like to foremost mention that the reason for me posting my opinion was a simple review of my experience and thats it.

Everyone has a right of opinion and I did it in the small way I could. I had voiced my opinion and I do not believe in repeating it just for the sake of it. I do not want to be dragged into a long argument, however, my name has been put in bad light for the wrong reasons. I just to want to clear out the same and move on with life.

1. I completely agree that I do not have the appropriate background in Mathematics, Engineering. I do not deny that, however my aim of attending the course was to understand or learn the tricks of financial modelling. Plus learn mathematics while doing that. Simple. I am more of a corporate finance guy, with limited mathematics involved, but still very keen to learn. The reason for joining the CFE was to learn excel modelling, and mathematics (which surely is my weak link). I did not even hear about SABR, and those complex models and I knew I wouldn't get the CFE, cause I do know my weakness.

2. Financial modelling vise, I was much faster than my counterparts, though they were much better with the mathematics and physics reasoning. But I was much faster in implementing the source code. Nothing to be proud about, but just commenting on what Mr. Bhattacharya had said.

3. About writting CFE on my CV, let me clarrify, I did post that I was currently enrolled in the course from Risk Latte on Linkedin. The key word was "Enrolled" and I would never misappropriate words on my CV or any public document. I repeat I did post it, but with the words "Enrolled".

4. About my laundry list of complaints. I once again only want to clear out my name. I did write to Mr. Bhattacharya, stating my concern due to the delay of classes for 2-2.5 months.

I had joined the classes late and had missed one already. I really appreciate Mr. Bhattacharya for accomodating me even after the deadline for admission was over. For the next classe which was to be held on Aug 1 or something, I booked my tickets and hotel in India (both non-refundable) to save on cost. However, the class was postponed one day before it was supposed to take place. I lost a lot, but it was fine. I didnt say anything. However, the revised timing did affect me as I had planned other things and the sudden change could not be accomodated. I asked for a genuine adjustment given I had already pre-planned the month to be shifted to end of Aug.

I did not delay 4 classes as stated in the statement by Mr. Bhattacharya. Since then (Aug), there have been no classes and now I have other priorities and work schedule which really hinders me to adjust to such a delay.

As a professional, I do have other commitments, which I have to arrange for with my management, well in advance, given that I was doing this course out of my pocket and for my own interest.

4. About the refund, I did not pester anyone, I only wrote two emails asking for a refund, given only 1 session was attended, and the extended delay was not my fault. This was denied. I wrote back saying, that a penalty can be charged for me backing out, but atleast some refund in good faith seems reasonable. This was denied. I wrote back saying, that I couldnt do much, given my lack of resources and power, but atleast I can voice my opinion. Stating this, I said my farewell, with no expectation of refund again. So I believe this does not constitute threatening for refund.

5. I really appreciate Mr. Rahul , for still writting me today, offering me still come in, a gesture which I do praise and hold in high regards. But overall my experience was not good and all I did was express my opinion and thats it.

Once again, I wanted to write once and be done with my expression, however, the response from Mr. Bhattacharya putting me down on wrong charges, makes me come back and reply.

I do not wish to comment any further on this topic in the future and this will be my last post on this issue.

Mugoyal

 

[Andy Nguyen]

We would be more than happy to provide a full / sample list of our students and graduates to all those who want to know. You can always write to our students and find out more about our course.

I'm going to take your offer and would like to have the full list of students who ever took your courses so I can offer them to write us a review, respond to this discussion, hear their positive story about the course. You have my email address. I would encourage you to invite many of your CFE graduates who have a happy story to tell to share with us here.

Here's something that we should make absolutely clear to all readers of this forum as well as all the students of financial engineering in and around New York City who are attending regular, full time University courses.

Certificate in Financial Engineering (CFE) run by Risk Latte is definitely NOT suitable for full time University and college students.
All full time University and college students in and around NYC, please DO NOT enroll for our CFE course.

There should be a big bold disclaimer in red color on the your website advising that it's not suitable for full-time students. Instead, you give discounts for full-time students taking the NYC CFE for Jan 2011. You can go to CFE NYC link, look under the Course Fee to see what you advertise and what you claim here. I took a screenshot of the website today, as well as the PDF pamphlet for archival purpose. There are discount for full-time university students taking the CFE courses in Hongkong, Singapore, Mumbai as well.

Course Fee:
US$6,000 (USD Six Thousand) per person
US$4,000 (USD Four Thousand) per person for full time students



I should note that Quantnet was approached last year year by Rahul when Risk Latte wanted to advertise the CFE course in NYC to our members. During our email exchanges, it was mentioned that Risk Latte will give additional discount to full-time students which is consistent with what is being advertised on their website currently. See above.

When we requested further materials relevant to the course and its marketing, we never received a follow up for our request. No further communication has taken ever since.

 

[sycurve]

Dear Andy,

I can of course respond back to Rajan S's comments / posts but I shall refrain from saying anything further. (Legal threat removed)

And after some thought, I have come to the conclusion that we don't have to justify our actions, strategies to anyone on this forum. People are entitled to their opinions and comments and so be it. And these posts, as they pertain to our courses, are really negative and destructive in nature. If you are running a campaign on the internet (and maybe outside of it) to slander and belittle us, our company and our courses, there's very little I can do about it. But I am not going to join this debate because, aside from the reasons mentioned above, neither do I have the verbal power to match comments from someone like Rajan nor is there enough colour to the issue that I can provide.

However, I cannot help making a quick final comment since you have raised that point: yes, we do have discounts for the full time students in NY because there are a lot of working interns who are still students and many banks have now requested us to design cutomized CFE for their interns; and a couple other major schools would have pools of students from the Engineering & Physics schools where we would shortly offer customized CFE along the lines the public curriculum is offered. We are in talks with quite a few very good schools. And therefore, we have special fees for the students.

But in general we would still strongly discourage students from joining our courses.

Overall, our business is looking really good in the States and the Americas. We are in talks with partners to form a subsidiary company in the United States and offer CFE and other training and educational programmes in many different areas. We are planning to meet with Government agencies and other institutions there to develop cooperation. Our web development and the development of a new portal may also migrate there soon. Overall, it's all looking good and we are extremely excited about this whole venture.

Our NYC batches will go on as usual and my colleagues and I from Asia would be travelling to the U.S. (mostly, NYC) very frequently in the next couple of months for the CFE classes and am expected to do so for a lot of other institutional training programmes with banks and investment banks in NYC and connecticut. Our training and education business in and around NY is on the rise and we are extremely happy about it.

I wish you and your readers all the best and I hope they all find the right financial engineering course on this forum. Also, since we (I, and anyone from our company) really do not belong in your forum it would be best we took your leave for good.

Best regards,
Rahul Bhattacharya
Hong Kong
+852 6395 8032
+852 3752 0619
Email: info@risklatte.com
www.risklatte.com

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Please refrain from making legal threats to any of our members. We will not allow that and will remove any comment that put our members at risk. A public forum is not a place to discuss legal matters.

We have the interest of our members at heart and will do all we can to make sure they can come here to express their opinion in an environment free of intimidation or fear mongering tactics from any company, big or small. We welcome direct response from all parties involved but it must be done in a professional manner, specially from a professional education service.

This whole thread should serve as an example for prospective students who are interested in doing Financial Engineering courses to really do research on the programs and courses they are going to spend money on. There should be no excuse for not asking the courses to provide references from past participants, alumni for feedback.

Do not rely solely on the course's website for information. Use Google to search for forum discussion about the course. Use Facebook, LinkedIn to contact people who have done these courses before. This applies to every online courses, certificate, MFE programs.

I hope our readers can learn something from the experience of the participants here. And I'd like to thank them for going through the troubles to share their opinion.

We wish Risk Latte the best in all of their business planning and meeting the needs of your current and future customers.

 

[DominiConnor]

Threatening people on an internet forum is rarely wise, and typically quite counter productive.

I feel included by the accusation that we have engaged in a vendetta against Rahul, yet when I review comments made by 3rd parties such as myself and Andy, we have tried really quite hard to be neutral, including in my own case specifically stating that I don't know enough to take a strong position. In addition I have no strong opinion on whether the course is not suitable for students in NY.

Andy's advice is entirely sound that you should treat investment in a course as an investment and apply the same checks you would for any other major investment or purchase. Maybe more so, since there is substantial opportunity cost if you take a course that is wrong for you personally.

All good programs have some sort of process where you can talk to alumni, on the CQF they are at the information sessions, else the admin people will dig up someone who they believe is relatively 'like you' .
Of course it is possible to stuff that process with 'friends', which is why Andy is right that LinkedIn, Google, QN and Wilmott.com are your friends here.

Also, be aware that you don't know what you're doing.
The whole point of spending $K's on education is because you don't know what it is that you don't know, nor do you know whether the set of things that you know you don't know is complete.

Asking is the only way out of that, and from more than source to avoid bias and sampling error.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Update Risk Latte has updated their website with the following disclaimer

* All classes – 6 weekends (12 days) – spanning approximately 80 hours – are expected to finish within a time span of 6 (six) months from the date of the start. However, there may be delays due to unforeseen or internal and external reasons and Risk Latte Company shall not be liable in any way for the same and under such circumstances shall not refund any fee paid in by any student.

Also, see Refund Policy on the CFE page on our website. All admissions to the course are subject to the above and the Refund Policy of the company.

This disclaimer was not in place for previous CFE advertisements. I, however, haven't been able to find the Refund Policy as stated by their website.

 

[sycurve]

This is a message for Andy who is the Administrator of this site / forum.

While you (and Dominic) continue to post comments about our site on the related CFE thread you have closed that thread for us. I find that objectionable and unfair. We may pull out from your forum or that particular thread but we should have the option and the right to respond whenver you or anyone else posts comments about us.

And since you are going around spreading the word about our course and our company we reserve the right to comment and respond to your comments and opinions in appropriate forums. And we are hoping that you would not disbar us from those forums / facebook page where you run comments about us.

As a first step please open the thread on CFE on this forum where you are continuing to post comments about our course.

Regards,
Rahul Bhattacharya
Course Director, CFE
Risk Latte Company
Hong Kong
+852 6395 8032
+852 3752 0619
info@risklatte.com
www.risklatte.com

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I'm moving your post back to this thread. This thread was not closed as you claimed.

I'd like to believe that you simply didn't refresh your browser when you attempted to reply to this thread. You will always be welcome here to respond to any comments that may help your firm's reputation.

You can also follow up with your early promises by providing Dominic with a screenshot of the large network, providing me with the full list of 180 graduates of your program.

Can you also post link to the Refund Policy on the CFE page? I could not find it anywhere on your website.

 

[darth]

"There's more discipline and ethics in Asia than there is in the West"

As far as my experience goes I doubt this statement.

 

[sycurve]

Andy,

Thank you for opening the thread again. Actually, I'd like to be a student here, at least for a while. I realize I am amongst luminaries here. You are running such a stellar website, in a highly technical area, with such a huge fan following and naturally you must be an expert in the area of financial engineering and quantitative finance.

I would like to ask you - you, personally (and not any of your members) - a few questions on which I am really unable to find any answers. I am sure you can help me. And I am hoping that you wouldn't simply do a Google search and post general replies.

I'll come back to you shortly on this forum.

Many thanks in anticipation,

Cheers!
Rahul