A practical four-day workshop for financial institutions to obtain a better understanding and practical skills in building user friendly valuation and simulation models for effective decision making and to stay competitive.

About the Workshop

It is now clear that the credit crunch was not due simply to bull market over-optimism, but largely resulted from the failures of a number of the financial models that have been the norm for the last generation.

Contrary to popular view, building a good financial model in a bank is not equivalent to opening a spread-sheet, typing numbers and entering formulae to relate cells. That is entry-level financial modeling much as a baby learns to walk. Building a sophisticated financial model has three pre-requisites: (a) being exposed to ‘advanced’ features of Excel; (b) traveling beyond the spread-sheet and macro interfaces into the VBA and User-Forms space; (c) being introduced to ‘real-life models’ to understand the power of financial modeling.

This programme exposes participants to all the required ingredients. This is true for all situations in a bank: whether it is an option pricing model, a model to track delinquencies, a model to calculate the ‘True’ return from a lending transaction or a consumer-finance pricing model. Banking is all about numbers and financial modeling is all about insights, dimensions of a situation and decision making – the two are inextricably intertwined; architecturally, a spread-sheet will never be able to do the job of a good financial model.

Attend this highly interactive 4-day workshop that devotes a day and half to ‘advanced’ features of Excel and a full day to ‘VBA’. Armed with this knowledge, participants will also examine some real-life models on the last day of the programme. Participants will be exposed to learning the tools and techniques of model building based on examples from the World of Finance and master Visual Basic Applications (VBA) which is an essential component of modeling.

Key unique features of the workshop

Key benefits of attending:
•	Learn to construct models that apply to all functional areas: finance, accounting, marketing, human resources, budgeting, planning, statistical studies, forecasting etc
•	Learn to build Securitization Models, Monte Carlo Analysis Models, Share Price Forecasting Models, Vehicle Finance Models and etc
•	Examine several World Class Financial Models and the code behind the Models
•	Learn to employ the IPO framework in constructing Models
•	Learn to work with both Excel and User forms as two distinct platforms for developing sophisticated financial models

Course Objective

This workshop exposes participants to technology and tools for building models in various functional areas and to identify the challenge in building a model which is:
•	To decompose a situation into constituent variables
•	Establish valid relationships amongst variables
•	Map variable ( and relationships) to a modeling eco-system on a PC using Excel and its programming counterpart, Visual Basic for Applications
•	Learning to use the ‘advanced’ features of Excel
•	Learning to employ ‘User Forms’ as a  platform in building financial models
•	Master the basics and advanced features of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the programming environment of Excel and the tools for developing powerful models
•	Learn to use Excel and VBA Controls in your models.

This course devotes a substantial amount of time to discussing advanced features of Excel, and Visual Basic and anchors topics with examples of real-life models so that participants may simulate the process models that address unique requirements.

Programme requirement:
Participants require access to a laptop with Microsoft Excel 2000, Excel XP or Excel 2003. Please do not come with Excel 2007 as this version of Excel is not supported by this program. Delegates also need to prepare for the course via background reading material supplied at least a week  prior to the course.

Seats are limited to 25 delegates to ensure high level of one to one interactivity. Register before May 13th to enjoy a USD260 discount off the standard rate for banks and financial institutions.

Secure your seats today. Contact
Shalini Nair
snair@theasianbanker.com