CFI's Most Popular Courses

CFI offers courses on over 180 banking and finance topics. They're great when you need to learn new skills, brush up on a concept, or fit in some quick learning.

When you finish a course, you'll receive a certificate of completion that you can share with the CFI community directly on LinkedIn or other social media platforms.

Accounting Fundamentals

💡 Learning Objectives

• Understand the role and importance of the financial statements.
• Define various financial statement terms.
• Explore the format of the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.
• Record financial statement transactions.
• Understand how transactions move through the financial statements.
• Prepare simple financial statements.

❓Who should take Accounting Fundamentals?

Anyone who wants to review the fundamentals and building blocks of the accounting process. It will also be useful for professionals who work in finance and want to review the concepts required for financial modeling and valuation in CFI’s later courses.

Excel Fundamentals - Formulas for Finance

💡 Learning Objectives

• Use basic Excel functions to perform statistical analysis on data sets.
• Explore functions used to aggregate or summarize financial data in various ways.
• Compare various lookup functions to understand their advantages and disadvantages.
• Apply useful date functions for annual, quarterly, and monthly models.
• Compare the basic NPV & IRR and the more advanced XNPV & XIRR functions.
• Understand basic and advanced custom formatting for numbers and dates in Excel.

❓Who should take Excel Fundamentals - Formulas for Finance?

This course is perfect for beginners, intermediate, and even advanced financial professional Excel users.  The course starts off with the basics but quickly advances, so even more proficient users will learn something new and have a great refresher.

Reading Financial Statements

💡 Learning Objectives

Read & Understand the Balance Sheet

• Navigate successfully through the notes to the financial statements.
• Read and interpret the various items in a published balance sheet.
• Understand complex balance sheet concepts (e.g. deferred taxes, goodwill, investments, etc.)

Read & Understand the Income Statement and Cash Flow

• Understand the different ways to present an income statement and cash flow statement.
• Read and interpret the various items in a published income statement.
• Identify the operating, financing, and investing activities of a company.
• Determine what is contained in an annual report and where to find it.

❓Who should take Reading Financial Statements?

Anyone who wants to review the fundamentals of reading financial statements. This highly interactive accounting course has many different applied exercises and case studies. Sophisticated search and navigation tools allow you to go at your own pace, while pop quizzes test what you have learned. The reading financial statements course includes two PDF reference guides – a financial statements glossary and an accounting factsheet. These can be used during the course and downloaded to your computer for future reference.

Introduction to 3-Statement Modeling

💡 Learning Objectives

• Understand how the three core financial statements link together
• Financial model-building best practices
• Understand how to build a financial projection model using a company’s historical data and various assumptions about the future performance of the company
• Find the right balance between a highly complex model and an overly simplistic one
• Think about crafting assumptions and various forecasting methods
• Understand how to review your model and audit it for potential errors

❓Who should take Introduction to Three-Statement Modeling?

Beginner-level investment or commercial bankers, beginner-level equity or credit research analysts, corporate development professionals, and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) professionals. 

Financial Analysis Fundamentals

💡 Learning Objectives

• Calculate and interpret various return ratios, such as return on equity and return on assets.
• Conduct an in-depth vertical analysis of the income statement, including calculating and interpreting different profitability ratios.
• Assess a company’s asset utilization efficiency, including undertaking a detailed assessment of its work capital.
• Calculate and interpret a wide range of leverage and liquidity ratios.
• Conduct and present a comprehensive horizontal (trend) financial analysis.
• Compare a company’s performance against its industry peers to gain valuable insights.

❓Who should take Financial Analysis Fundamentals?

Any financial analyst working in investment banking, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), equity research, corporate development, and other areas of finance and accounting. 

Introduction to Banking

💡 Learning Objectives

• Understand the different types/structures of financial services firms
• Determine the different types of banking services that are provided
• Understand who the customers are for each type of service
• Learn how a bank makes money
• Differentiate the various banking career paths

❓Who should take Introduction to Banking?

Any aspiring credit analysts working in insurance, underwriting, rating agencies, commercial lending, corporate credit analysis, and other areas of credit evaluation. It is also a great introductory course for anyone who wants to learn more about the banking industry.  

5 C’s of Credit

💡 Learning Objectives

• Explain each characteristic in the 5 Cs of Credit Framework
• Identify the key credit strengths and weaknesses of a company by examining various sources of information
• Discuss how the 5 Cs of credit are used to assess the borrower

❓Who should take The 5 C's of Credit Course?

Any aspiring credit analysts working in insurance, underwriting, rating agencies, commercial lending, corporate credit analysis, and other areas of credit evaluation.

Introduction to ESG

💡 Learning Objectives

• Explain what ESG is and its relevance to making financial decisions;
• Describe key environmental, social, and governance issues;
• Explain how stakeholders influence corporate ESG performance;
• Analyze ESG risks and opportunities;
• Assess ESG company performance using publicly available information;
• Translate ESG information to business intelligence.

❓Who should take Introduction to ESG?

Any analyst who would like to understand better how a company manages risks and opportunities that shifting market & non-market conditions create in today’s world.

ESG Fundamentals

💡 Learning Objectives

• Explain key ESG concepts and the considerations for companies & investors.
• Leverage systems thinking to assess materiality across companies and industries.
• Determine risks & opportunities for both internal and external stakeholders.
• Evaluate ESG maturity, the quality of disclosures, and actual performance.
• Learn to build an ESG scorecard using an example company and set of client directives.

❓Who should take ESG Fundamentals?

Analysts who would like to understand better how a company manages risks and opportunities that shifting market & non-market conditions create in today’s world. 

Introduction to FinTech

💡 Learning Objectives

• Define what FinTech is and its importance
• Explain the history and evolution of FinTech
• Identify the main areas and associated skills in FinTech and how they differ from traditional practices
• Identify key players in the FinTech industry
• Interpret FinTech regulations and compliance
• Explain the future of FinTech and the advancement of new and current technologies

❓Who should take Introduction to FinTech?

Junior or aspiring analysts who want to build the skills necessary to innovate traditional financial services.

Fundamentals of Data Analysis in Excel

💡 Learning Objectives

• Analyze a dataset using native Excel tools
• Apply Excel tools and formulas to transform and structure your data
• Create pivot tables to slice and dice your data
• Visualize data with pivot charts and Excel Charts
• Explore the landscape of data analysis and visualization

❓Who should take Fundamentals of Data Analysis in Excel?

Professionals who want to expand their skill set to include data analysis and visualization in Excel.