Certified Financial Modeling Professional (CFMP)TM

Program Overview  Download Brochure

This course has been independently assessed and endorsed by NASBA, the official board that regulates accounting and financial education in the United States of America.

How can you put data to work for you?  Specifically, how can numbers in a spreadsheet tell us about present and past business activities, and how can we use them to forecast the future? The answer is in building quantitative financial models, and this course is designed to help you understand the fundamentals of this critical, foundational, business skill.

Who Should Learn Financial Modeling? Anybody dealing with any decision related to money. If you are involved in financial decision making/ planning, then you would definitely need financial modelling day in and day out.

Build more powerful and more accurate forecasting models to better analyze financial data, predict revenues and costs, assess risks—and justify critical business decisions. Financial modelling requires a broad skill set: Accounting, finance, spreadsheet, design, presentation and communication skills are all essential. This course brings together those skills and shows how they can be applied to produce best-practice financial models.

Through the use of Excel, this course will teach you how to create and use financial models in your organization.

Benefits of a CPE Registered Course

  • Endorsed by NASBA, the official board that regulates accounting and financial education in the United States of America. 
  • Our courses have been independently assessed to ensure a consistent and high quality
  • This provides proof that we comply with industry best practices and made a commitment to the delivery of high quality continuing professional education
  • Being a registered NASBA sponsor demonstrates that our presenters and program developers have vast technical knowledge and experience.
  • Earn 42 Continuing Professional Education (CPE) units.

Key Takeaways

  1. Learn the objectives, principles and methods of financial modelling
  2. Understand in which situations a model will be a helpful tool to support decision making
  3. Apply model building “best practices” to reduce errors and improve usability of model
  4. Master and apply the essential finance principles underlying the key concepts of value, risk and return
  5. Develop effective finanical models using excel 

nasba_cpe_logoThe International Institute for Executive Training (iIET) is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its web site: www.nasbaregistry.org

 

*Successful completion of the course materials, and exam makes you a Certified Financial Modeling Professional (CFMP)™ . You can use the designation of CFMP™ on your resume and business card. 

Who Should Attend

This course is suitable for anyone who needs to extend their modelling skills and understand the advanced aspects of project finance models. Including:

  • Business professionals
  • Investors
  • Financial controllers
  • Commercial, financial, investment, planning, risk and systems analysts
  • Principal advisors

Prerequisites

It is suggested to attend the Certified International Business Leader(CIBL) program delegates will:

  1. 3 or more years of work experience
  2. A formal qualification

Or at the discretion of the iIET.

Course Requirements

Delegates must meet the following criteria to be eligible for certificate of completion:

  1. Pre-requisites – delegates must have 3 years industry experience and/or a formal qualification.
  2. Attendance – delegates must attend all sessions of the course. Delegates who miss more than two hours of the course sessions will not be eligible to sit for the Certified International Business Leader (CIBL)TM
  3. Successful completion of the course work and exam – Upon completion of this training course you will receive your certificate from iIET, an internationally accredited learning center recognized by Qualifi Ltd., a UK govt recognized awarding organization.
  4. The program assumes you have basic knowledge of MS Excel and accounting/finance We will teach you various features Excel as part of the course, it is advisable that you know how to use Excel.

Topics We Will Cover

Introduction to Models

  • Definition and Uses of Models, Common Functions
  • How Models Are Used in Practice
  • Key Steps in the Modeling Process
  • A Vocabulary for Modeling
  • Mathematical Functions

Review of Spreadsheet Building Concepts

  • Importance of good spreadsheet building habits
  • Types of spreadsheet errors
  • Practices to detect and prevent spreadsheet errors
  • Seven good spreadsheet building habits

Exploring Functions In A Spreadsheet Model

  • General Format and use
  • Selected financial functions
  • Selected statistical functions
  • VLOOKUP and other logical functions

Activity:  Participants will prepare a simple spreadsheet and use the financial and statistical functions to evaluate operations using real time data.

Evaluation Criteria: Net Present Value

  • Criteria for Evaluating Projects
  • Time Value of Money
  • NPV Analysis of Projects
  • The Cost of Capital
  • Evaluating Projects

Case Study: Syngenta: Investment appraisal in action

 Probabilistic Models: Capturing Risk and Modeling Uncertainty

  • Examples of Probabilistic Models
  • Building Blocks of Probability Models
  • The Binomial Distribution
  • The Normal Distribution

Review of Fundamental Financial Statements

  • Income Statement
  • Balalnce Sheet
  • Statement of Cash Flows

Company and Project Valuation method

  • Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis
  • Understanding unlevered free cash flow
  • Forecasting free cash flow
  • Forecasting terminal value
  • Present value and discounting
  • Understanding stub periods
  • Performing sensitivity analysis

Activity:  Participants will conduct a sensitivity analysis using excel and create a sensitivity diagram by altering assumptions.

Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)

  • Learn the CAPM model
  • Why use CAPM to find value
  • Using the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity
  • Understanding and analyzing WACC

Case Study: Project Evaluation-Tortuga Fishing Equipment Company

Regression Models

  • Use of Regression Models
  • The questions regression models can answer
  • Interpretation of Regression Coefficients
  • R-squared and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE)
  • Fitting Curves to Data
  • Multiple Regression

Activity:  Based on a data set you will look for and define relationships between variables and discuss the strength of the analysis.

Forecasting

  • Approaches to forecasting
  • Analyzing historical data to identify components
  • Long-term trends
  • Cyclical variations
  • Seasonal variations
  • Random variations
  • Introduction to modeling time series analysis

Activity: Using historical data from a company you will use the tools of forecasting to forecast future sales or reveneue for an organization.

 Spreadsheet to Model: Using Excel To Create Models

  • Using assumptions and decision variables in spreadsheet models
  • Structuring a spreadsheet to model variables, objectives, and objective functions
  • Constructing simple cash-flow model
  • What-if analysis and sensitivity analysis
  • Limits to simple, deterministic models

Monte Carlo Simulation

  • The Nature and Uses Of Simulation Techniques
  • The Way Monte Carlo Simulation Works
  • Reviewing Statistical Measures and How to Calculate Them
  • Mean, Variance, Standard Deviation
  • Probability Distributions and The Normal Distribution
  • Running A Simulation and Interpreting Results
  • Monte Carlo Simulation