Advanced Performance and Financial Health Analysis for Financial Institutions Course

Course Details

This course brings together the key elements of financial statement analysis to help participants improve their financial analysis skills, enable them to ask the right questions, see the real risks facing businesses and investors, feel more confident in their ability to comment on business activities and performance and analyze financial health for management. These skills and the required technical knowledge will be put into practice throughout the course using interactive examples and case studies, putting theory and technique into context.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• List and differentiate between the important components of basic financial statements
• Explain financial statements' ratios and formulate Excel sheets and graphs for financial statements analysis
• Illustrate creative accounting schemes and critique the validity of accounting rules used
• Assess the quality of financial reports and evaluate the quality of earnings and cash flows reported
• Analyze the financial position and performance of a company over a period of time and draw conclusions regarding its sustainability

Course Outline

• Introduction to advanced financial analysis
• Users of financial data
• Content of the annual financial report
• Regional versus global standards
• Non-financial elements of the annual financial report and their importance
• Understanding the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement
• Other comprehensive income components
• Top-down approach for analysis
• Common size analysis to improve comparability
• Calculating trends and growth patterns
• Ratio analysis to assess key aspects of company performance:
• Profitability
• Liquidity
• Efficiency and working capital management
• Financing structure and risk
• Using graphical representation
• Financial cosmetics and creative accounting
• Valuing inventory at net realizable value: looking for signals of obsolete inventory
• Analyst's consideration when examining inventory
• Evaluating how capitalizing versus expensing costs affect financial statements and ratios
• Effect of different depreciation methods on financial statements
• Impairment and revaluation of property, plant and equipment
• The choice of an operating lease or finance lease
• Using special purpose vehicles for balance sheet manipulation
• Assessing the quality of financial reports
• Framework for assessing the company's quality of financial reports
• Potential problems that affect the quality of financial reports
• Defining the concept of sustainable and persistent earnings
• Recommending adjustments to improve quality and comparability
• Evaluating the earnings quality of a company
• Evaluating the cash flow quality of a company
• Indicators of balance sheet quality
• Sources of information about risk

Who Should Attend

Chief accountants, accounting managers, senior accountants, finance directors, finance managers, financial analysts, financial controllers, financial accounts managers, heads of finance departments, credit controllers, corporate financiers, credit risk analysts, bankers, and relationship managers.

Course Methodology

The course uses a mix of interactive techniques, such as brief presentations by the consultant, group exercises and case studies followed by presentations by the participants of the results.