Financial Modelling Certification – A Door Opener for Analysts in India

Let’s take one example to understand the importance of Financial Modelling:

When you are starting a new business or investing in any business, you must predict the profits precisely.

For example, if Reliance is planning to take the Metro Development project from Government, it must predict the return very accurately; otherwise, it will impact the company- financially to a large extent. This prediction job is done with the help of various tools and techniques. Financial Modelling is the base of all those techniques.

Now, you must have got an idea of how crucial Financial Modelling skills are. Now, let’s dive deep into it.

Let us begin by understanding what this course can do for you –

• Practical Skills – Financial modelling as a concept in an MBA program or while studying other courses is always taught as a theory. Modelling can be learned by individuals who are practicing for a long time. A certification program in core modelling from experts will help you in gaining practical skills that employers in India want. It is one thing to know in theory how depreciation affects the value of assets but completely different when you are required to show the calculations on an excel spreadsheet.

• Create Credibility – People always talk about their financial modelling skills in interviews but it is always easier said than done! By earning the certification you can establish credibility with your interviewer. Just by adding letters after the name does not impress interviewers but having the knowledge and confidence truly establishes credibility.
• Master of Excel – Most of the financial modelling methods are purely excel-based. This certification will teach you all the shortcuts and important excel tools like VLOOKUP, INDEX – MATCH, OFFSET, PIVOT, INDIRECT, Conditional formatting and many more.

Sample of an Excel model –

Best Practices – Employees and industry veterans spend so much time in building the knowledge base and best practices for financial modelling, using excel and valuations. In the earlier days, it was only possible to learn this by working under them. But fortunately now that is not the case and you can learn all of this by enrolling for a financial modelling certification.

Valuation and other technical skills – Financial modelling is mainly conducted for the valuation of securities especially equities using different valuation methods. Valuation methods include discounted cash flow, leveraged buyout, accretion dilution, dividend discount model, comparable company analysis, capital structure analysis sensitivity analysis to name a few.

Building these models manually, by using excel would help you understand all the steps in detail. It will include forecasting each line item of the three financial statements, valuing securities, calculating the weighted average cost of capital, risk premiums. Models like accretion dilution also help in deciding if a merger will be successful or not based on the assumptions.

Now that we know the knowledge we are going to posses from this certification let us look at the sectors where this can be applied –

• Investment Banks
• KPO’s
• Equity Research
• Financial planning (Research)
• Mutual Funds
• Credit rating agencies

 
You must be wondering what kind of roles you can get into in the above sectors. Well, there is a wide range of opportunities that will be available after this course and with proper skills, experience, network, background and knowledge you should expect offers from good companies. Below is a generic list

• Financial Analyst
• Financial Associate
• Market Research Analyst
• Equity research analyst
• Business Analyst
• Financial manager
• Venture Analyst
• Project manager

 
Companies in India offer jobs in financial modelling

The good news is that the market is scarce with employees having good financial modelling skills while the demand side is huge. Here is a list of companies (based on the sector) in India that employs candidates with excellent financial modelling skills

When I searched to get an idea for the available roles in financial modelling this is the output I received from an Indian job portal – 2553 jobs!