DENVER - The Investment Management Consultants Association named Dale Stevens, executive vice president of Wurts Johnson & Co., as its new president, only the second to take the office without holding the certified investment management analyst certification.
The group, now in its 10th year, has 900 members, only 368 of whom have the CIMAs.
Jeffrey Van Orden, vice president of Newbold's Asset Management, Bryn Mawr, Pa., was elected the group's treasurer. He also has no CIMA certification.
Mr. Stevens says he plans to take the program this summer to get the certification.
Mr. Van Orden said he hopes to take the course to get certified this summer or next year. "It's an excellent credential and probably something I ought to have," Mr. Van Orden said. "It's difficult to find a week for the program."
He said the credential is particularly useful to consultants at securities firms to set themselves off from other brokers.
IMCA membership is open to anyone with three years of investment consulting experience, and doesn't require CIMA designation. Participants in the CIMA program must be IMCA members.
This summer could be one of the last before the CIMA certification program changes extensively to involve more study.
As the new president, Mr. Stevens, who works in Wurts Johnson's Santa Monica, Calif., office, said a priority project will be to make the CIMA program more rigorous to improve the professionalism of the participants.
The group plans to enlarge the study work for the program to require it be done over a two-year period, instead of the current program, which consists of a weeklong course and examination at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Messrs. Stevens and Van Orden have, in fact, taught some of the courses in the CIMA program.
Under the expanding CIMA course, the first year would consist of extensive study materials for home, followed by an exam that would qualify applicants for a second year of home study, culminating in the one-week Wharton course and final examination.
The group hopes to institute the new program in 1996.
The other officers elected to IMCA are: Vice President Elizabeth Schulman, a CIMA and assistant vice president at Merrill Lynch & Co., Tucson, Ariz.; Executive Vice President Harold Rossen, a CIMA and senior vice president-investments at Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., Birmingham, Mich.; and Secretary Richard Davis, president of Pappy & Davis Law Corp., Los Angeles, who is a pension attorney and not a CIMA.
