SPECIALISTS IN FINANCIAL MODELLING

Women in Financial Modelling Online Community

Personally, I’ve never been particularly interested in entering any of the financial modelling championship competitions – I suppose I never felt the need to prove anything and it all seemed rather high-stress and hyper-competitive, with the questions being released at all hours of the night.  When the new Financial Modeling World Cup launched last month with a small entry fee and a two-hour commitment, I entered more out of curiosity than anything and found it actually quite stimulating and challenging. Being my first attempt and not taking it seriously (admittedly taking a phone call and then making myself tea and toast during the allotted time probably wasn’t wise). I completely bombed, and was rather relieved to see the names are not shown publicly for those who do poorly. Despite my pitiful results, I did find the challenge quite addictive and I took it far more seriously in the second round. I actually made it onto to the leader board at #34, although I am not sure if this rank takes into account my first attempt. I do hope so, as it means I’ll have a better chance at improving!

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Five Ways to Speed up the Excel Model-Building Process with Macros & VBA

Automating repetitive tasks with Excel Macros can dramatically cut down the time you spend building financial models, and can significantly increase your productivity.  A well-written (or recorded) macro enables you to repeat operations that you would normally do by hand but much more quickly and reliably. If you find yourself repeating the same action over and over again whilst building or editing your models then the use of VBA can increase speed and accuracy.

At our recent Melbourne Meetup, we heard from from Macro & VBA expert, Marcelo Mendonca from Rixena who specialises in Business Productivity Improvements, and has trained hundreds of professionals from engineering, management, finance, supply chain in Australia, India, South Korea and Brazil.  Marcelo gave us a practical demonstration covering:

•   Best practice for Financial Modelling with VBA
•   When to use a formula and when to use a Macro
•   Tricks for model-building such as finding broken links, or hard-coded numbers using VBA
•   Case studies of when the use of macros saves time and increases reliability of financial models

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