Model Like a Pro!
In our foundation mentorship program, you are expected to build an integrated core financial model just like a pro!
Why financial model matters?
Have you ever thought of how hiring managers assess your competence by your model?
Are you aware how many opportunities you would miss if your model is not up to the mark?
What are the elements that hiring manager will check in your model?
How could you leverage on your modeling skills in your interview?
Our Approach
Watch our pre-recorded video sessions that go through our curriculum (details follow)
Receive homework assignment after each mentorship session
Submit your homework regularly, before your mentorship session and at major milestone
Meet your mentor online, to help you understand concepts better and get your questions solved
Take our quiz questions to up your understanding
Our Curriculum
- What is the basic structure of a company’s financial report
- Understand the major components within income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements and the links between them
- Where do analysts/investors find important information about a company?
- Apply what you learn: Read an actual company’s financial report together
- This session is developed to refresh accounting concepts, so that students will not feel left behind during the following sessions that are intensely focused on more advanced material.
- Basic structure of a financial model.
- How does a financial model used by an investment analyst look like?
- How to organise the company’s reported numbers in your model?
- What is the key information you should note from company’s results, press releases and investor presentation slides?
- Formatting guidelines: Fine details that matter to your boss and client.
- Income statement: how do you approach each income statement item and key ratio?
- Balance sheet: how do you model each item to balance your balance sheet and key ratios?
- Cash flow statement: how to link up cash flow statement with income statement and balance sheet?
- Equity statement: linking with balance sheet and cashflow statement
- Why your model can be out of balance?
- How can you tell that your model is not balanced?
- How can you fix your model?
- Understand Enterprise Value and building DCF with your integrated model
- Other Valuation metrics: PE, EV/EBITDA, PB
- Building your valuation model
- Troubleshoot your model with Excel
- Key Excel functions and shortcuts that an analyst frequently uses
- Compare the company’s valuation with peers
- How can you quickly get the financial data from annual report to Excel spreadsheet
- Format your model like the professionals
How do we deliver it
∞
Unlimited instant messaging and email support from mentors
Additional Benefit
Join Springboard event at partner rate for life.
Access to Springboard partners for career advice.
Join exclusive Springboard alumni network
Job referral as and when there are opportunities
Enrollment and Costs
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Jan to Feb
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Apr to May
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June to July
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Aug to Sep
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Oct to Nov
FAQs
- You can pose questions to us by email, whatsapp group, or during our mentorship calls
- However, do your own research before asking a question: Google, Investopedia, and our notes. Why? This shows your self-initiative & ability to learn by yourself. You will lose credibility when you ask questions that are covered by our notes.
- When you ask us questions, please come up with your own researched answers. That’s a learning opportunity. Don’t be afraid of being wrong. We will help you from there.
- Send in your updates with the latest model/research report and what are your key questions at least 12 hours before your session.
- Punctuality and Timeliness are extremely important in our field.
- Make sure that technical issues are taken care of, such as WIFI stability, microphone and headphones, the quietness of your room.
- Get ready 5 minutes in advance to tackle technical issues & think through questions, so that you can maximize the learning during the mentorship call.
- If you are late for more than 5 minutes or do not show up for your usual slot without prior notification of at least 24 hours, your call is considered automatically consumed.
- You will receive your material a week or two before your mentorship period starts.
- We will send you details by email.
- Access to our course material is password protected. If you didn’t receive the password, please reach out to us.
- For Model Like a Pro students, we will host an online orientation session for every batch before the start of individual batches where we will set our expectation of progress and emphasise on important administrative matters. Please make your time to attend it.
- You must consume your mentorship sessions within the stipulated period (approx 2 months for Model Like a Pro).
- Most students can complete them within 6 weeks but we factor in weekend work trips / sick leave/ urgent family leaves for some weekends.
- You have an option to extend for another 1 or 2 months with extension fees payable, if you feel you need more guidance from your mentors. Extension package includes two half-an-hour sessions each month.
- You can request for a freeze of your mentorship if you need to prepare for an exam and biz trips but this is subject to early communication and up to our sole discretion.
- But if you foresee more commitment to other higher- priority work, we suggest you to talk to us to reschedule your mentorship, possibly to the future batch. Up-front communication is what we expect from you.
We have early bird discounts for our students. Please use contact us form to find out details from us.
At the end of our Model Like a Pro mentorship program, you are expected to build a professional-looking financial model with all the essential components, including integrated income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, DCF valuation, and company valuation metrics. You should have no problem answering financial modelling-related questions during your interviews.
At the end of our Research Like a Pro mentorship program, you are expected to conduct an in-depth research on a listed company, with all the essential analytical framework used by professionals on a daily basis. You will deliver a stock pitch to a panel of professional investment analysts.
If you are doing well in your stock pitch, you should have no problem conquering stock pitch challenges in every investment analyst interviews, based on our experience.
Prepare yourself for the powerful “Tell me about yourself.” question. Often, it can make or break your interview and your chances of a great front office career.
Make yourself appropriately comfortable. The grill is intended to assess how suitable you are for the vacant role, not who you are or aren’t. So, don’t take it too personally and get too upset. At the end of the day, it won’t kill you and will only make you stronger. Believe in yourself and just do your best. If you can (and only if you can), help drive the process to get the interviewers to know more about you and how you fit in. More importantly, find out appropriately that the job is indeed what you understand it to be.
Don’t spoil it. Arrive punctually, dress appropriately and ask questions appropriate for each stage of the interview.
Concise, Up to the point, Show your relevance.
To the busy hiring manager in the finance industry, the CV should be limited to one-page, concise and to the point. If the reader can’t figure out your point after the first 5 words, don’t count on it that they will grind their brain juices to go further.
Give your CV a story, and know the story. A story is more powerful than fragmented details that point to everything, or worse, nothing at all.
Don’t give your CV any spoilers. No mistakes please, no careless omissions and definitely no misrepresentations of your experience and skills. As Confucius would have it, “Wise are those who say they know when they know and who say they don’t know when they don’t.”
We are a premium mentorship platform with many intangible benefits for our students.
We don’t compete with other typical training programs by pricing because we believe that the value you are getting from our mentors and events are worth more. Hence, we do not disclose our fees publicly.
If you are interested, please fill up the contact us form and we will get in touch with you to assess your suitability for our program.
Since 2009, we have been investing our resources into building good and strong relationships with institutions, teams and established professionals in the industry. We only recommend our best apprentices/interns to them.
Our experience tells us that only time on the Foundation Program will tell us how good an apprentice is. Hiring managers often lament to us about how HR interviews and CV screening tools fall short of delivering the quality candidates they want. Our program is a different engagement tool structured to be more meaningful for hiring managers who are serious about looking for the right candidates. If we don’t maintain our tough demand on quality, we would lose their trust and support.
There are people who may feel shortchanged going into the Program, believing how “over-qualified” they are for the Program. Most of them eventually agree that they could have been trying to bite far more than they can chew.
If you are GOOD, we will share our invaluable network of front office mentors, alums and institutions with you and make this difference to your career success. Would you rather go into a career path by yourself, or with the SpringBoard network behind you?
Would you rather go into a career path by yourself, or with the SpringBoard network behind you?
There isn’t any bona fide training institution on earth that can guarantee you a job once you complete the program. Springboard’s program is aimed at improving your chances of getting a job, rather than guaranteeing you a job. Nonetheless, you can rest assured that we will work hard to help you jumpstart your front office career, and we have a wealth of experience and success at it. 1 in 3 of our apprentices became success stories within 3-6 months of completing the advanced program (Research Like a Pro).
We (and the industry) generally consider an age above 30 years to be a barrier of entry to the industry: as people reach their 30s, they have a certain level of income, and require a certain level of work-life balance.
Switching into the competitive finance industry likely means getting entry-level pay and working >12 hours a day. This is a huge sacrifice to one’s lifestyle. With some years of working experience in an irrelevant role, people could have already shaped their own way of working and become resistant to changes as required by the industry.
Based on our observations, the few people who usually land research roles after 30 years-old are doctors (to cover biotech) or specialists in certain industries. If you are above 30 years old and still wish to change your career, please feel free to contact Springboard for a non-obligatory assessment of your chance of making the switch.
SpringBoard TM is a career mentoring platform and is a very different platform from most other programs in the market.
Firstly, we emphasize on practical experience and do not focus on an end to academic training and discussion.
We are proud that we are likely the ONLY institution to help you earn relevant experience and secure relevant job referees. In this industry where relevant experience is of utmost importance, we provide you with an experience closest to that.
If your quality of work convinces us that you belong to our group, we will stand behind you and push you towards career success. We help you gain access to exclusive hiring opportunities through our network.
Second, through years of experience, we know what employers in the investment industry are looking for and how a student can be best prepared for the scarce opportunity. There are hardly any providers as specialized as us.
We don’t make it hard criteria for entrance into our mentorship program. However, it is preferable that one has at least passed CFA level 1 exam or have studied a finance/accounting degree so that value of our program can be fully utilized.
More importantly, you must possess the passion and hunger for a front office career. Many can claim that they have what it takes to make it in this career, but our program is structured to pick out the deserving for entry into the high-octane front office roles, where we take pains to convince hiring partners to offer you those rare opportunities.
Our focus is on bringing up one’s potential to maximize the chance of a successful career switch and smoothen the transition process.
