Further study after accountancy qualification?

Eazos1

Hi

I finished CIMA a year ago and am looking at other courses for further study as my company said they would probably sponsor me. My current role has me using my CIMA skills on a daily basis and is a mixture of mgt / fin accounting, investment appraisal, decision making etc so CIMA was a good fit.

I've looked at a part-time distance learning MBA but think that there would probably be a fair amount of duplication between the course and CIMA. Some also seem a bit wishy washy.
I was looking at the CFA course which seems interesting, challenging, would probably be useful in my future career and perhaps would also help me with personal investment decisions - however I believe it is as hard or even harder than CIMA
I was also looking for a distance learning course on deferred tax but am having difficulty finding one. I am working in a remote location so alll courses would have to be online / distance learning.

Basically my questions are as follows:
What areas of further study have people pursued after getting their accountancy qualification?
Did anyone do an MBA and was there much overlap?
Is the CFA worth the pain?
Perhaps a masters in finance would be a better choice than the MBA?
Any decent online deferred tax courses out there?

Thanks

Eoghan

CFA is harder than CIMA. Only worth doing CFA if you are going to be working in investment mgt., capital markets or the like....
For other study it depends on where you see your career going. An MBA is useful if you aspire to higher mgt. in a large company. Some MBA awarding places (in the UK) used to give exemptions if you were CIMA qualified. There is duplication in the course content in an MBA but a lot of the MBA experience and why it's valued is about doing the group projects - it's not all about the content. There's also a place in France where you can get a non-mba masters just by doing the thesis if you have CIMA. A masters might be useful if you ever want to do lecturing for example. Check the CIMA website for info on that.
There's also a corporate finance qualification but they only give exemptions to ACA, not CIMA unfortunately...
Other than that you could do the tax exams but you could do anything in life, why be a tax consultant :eek:

There are diplomas in IFRS and US GAAP available from BPP.

The Open University do a masters for accountants in industry which is a mix of management and strategy/financial strategy.

I am thinking of doing this - being CIMA would shorten it from about three years to two and a half.