We select and review courses independently. This post may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a commission, which helps to support our website.
Financial Analyst is the most desired career in the financial services industry. Financial statement analysis provides actionable insights into a business’s financial health and potential for long term growth. As the overall economic activity increases, the demand for financial analysts also grows. The growth in the areas of big data is also driving growth in financial analysis field. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (LBS), the profession of Financial Analysis is projected to grow at about 11% in the decade between 2016 and 2026, which is faster than the average for all occupations. Another statistic shows that the median annual income for a financial analyst, at entry-level, is significantly higher than the median household income in the United States overall. There’s also a lot of opportunity for growth and upward mobility, as many financial analysts get better and bigger roles in organizations as they acquire more experience.
Financial Analysts are not only employed at Wall Street firms, but also banks, insurance companies, real estate investment brokerages, and other data-driven companies. Any business that frequently makes important decisions on how to spend money employs financial analysts to help make those decisions. Financial analysis majorly involves working in Excel, using a spreadsheet to analyze data and make projections. Proficiency in relational databases, and statistical and graphics packages also adds value. For anyone looking to gain all this knowledge or for current professionals wanting to brush their skills, taking a Financial Analyst course online is a great option. In addition to a comprehensive learning experience, one can earn a verified certificate to show to their potential employers.
To help you in your journey to learn financial analysis, our team of experts have compiled this list of best financial analysis course, certification, training programs and classes available online. You will learn the necessary skills and tools, like, financial statement analysis and valuation, technical analysis, financial data analytics, financial planning and analysis etc., which will set you on the path to become a successful financial analyst. This list of financial analyst training and certification courses includes beginner, intermediate and advanced level programs offered by prestigious schools and renowned instructors around the world. Many of these are available for free.
1. Language & Tools of Financial Analysis by The University of Melbourne (Coursera)
This Financial Analysis course is the first course in a four-course Specialization on the Essentials of Corporate Financial Analysis and Decision-Making. The prestigious University of Melbourne has developed this program from first principles in partnership with their finance colleagues at Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), which is one of the most successful financial institutions in the world.
This course imparts students with firm grounding in the principles of financial analysis. It uncovers essentials of accounting information underpinning financial analysis and teaches how to apply that information in financial analysis using discounted cash flow methodology to arrive at fair evaluation of a company. The lessons are firmly rooted in the finance practice so you’ll learn not only academic but also practical knowledge of corporate tool set that will help you make well-informed business decisions.
The course is taught by Paul Kofman (PhD Erasmus University Rotterdam), the Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at University of Melbourne and Sean Pinder (PhD), an Associate Professor with the Department of Finance at the University of Melbourne. It is structured into 4 modules with video lectures, supplemental reading material and plenty of quizzes and exercises at the end of each module.
Key Highlights
- Learn the foundations of accounting principles and financial analysis and develop an understanding of the links between these
- Learn how to measure value creation at the firm level
- Understand the key financial statements produced by a company and reported to its shareholders with real world examples
- Understand how financial analysts use ratio analysis to measure relative profitability, leverage, efficiency and the liquidity of a company
- Actual financial statements of US-listed food company Kellogg’s and its competitor Kraft are used in the course to demonstrate financial analysis techniques
- Learn Discounted cash Flow (DCF) analysis technique to evaluate financial decisions
- Option to audit the course for free. Earn a Verified Certificate by completing the course assignments and paying a small fee.
Duration : 14 hours, 4 to 6 hours per week
Rating : 4.7
Sign up Here
2. The Complete Financial Analyst Course 2020 (Udemy)
This is arguably the best Financial Analyst course on Udemy with around 200,000 student enrolments. It is the most comprehensive, dynamic and practical course online and covers a multitude of topics including financial math, business analysis, financial statement analysis & valuation, capital budgeting and accounting. Students also get acquainted with the required tools for financial analysis like Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.
This course is provided by 365 Careers, which is the most popular provider of business courses on Udemy. So far more than 500000 students and employees from 80 Fortune 100 companies have taken their Udemy courses on Finance and Business. They have experience training top firms like Citibank, PayPal and Apple.
This course is actually a bundle of following 10 different courses that together ensure you get the right training for each critical aspect of a financial analyst job:
- Beginner and Intermediate Excel
- Advanced Excel
- Accounting
- Advanced Accounting
- Financial Statement Analysis
- Working Capital management
- Fundamentals of Financial Analysis
- Capital Budgeting
- Financial Modeling
- PowerPoint
The course content is delivered through a series of animated videos. There are graded quizzes, practice exercises and a lot of course notes and downloadable reference material. Extensive case studies are included to reinforce what has been learnt. Students also get access to the course Q&A Forum where they can ask questions and clear doubts.
This Udemy financial analysis course is suitable for all skill levels and does not require any prior experience. Everything starts at the basics and then progresses to advanced topics.
Key Highlights
- Perform Financial statement analysis
- Gain essential Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint skills
- Learn to read and understand a company’s profit and loss statements and build them yourself
- Calculate Liquidity, Solvency, Profitability, and Growth ratios to analyze a company’s performance
- Understand Accounting and Bookkeeping principles
- Understand whether a company’s project is feasible from a financial perspective and be able to compare between different investment opportunities
- Understand the importance of timing in terms of revenue and cost recognition
- Understand 10-K reports
- Calculate a complete loan schedule
- Hands-on challenges to practice the acquired skills
- Full lifetime access to over 350 lectures, 3 articles and 477 downloadable resources
- Get a Financial Analyst certification upon completing the course
Duration : 17.5 hours on-demand video
Rating : 4.5
Sign up Here
3. The Complete Financial Analyst Training & Investing Course (Udemy)
This is one of the most popular Financial Analyst training program on Udemy. It has been developed by the award winning business school professor Chris Haroun. Chris is an MBA graduate from Columbia University, former Goldman Sachs employee, hedge fund founder, venture capitalist, TEDx Talk speaker, author & entrepreneur featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Wired and Venture Beat. He is also the #1 best selling business teacher on Udemy with several top selling courses under his belt. Chris guarantees that this is the most thorough and best online financial analyst course as he has based it on his real life practical experience.
This financial analyst certification is a very well rounded course where students learn a lot about finance and investing, including how to pick stocks, how to perform financial statement analysis, how to value companies, how to use technical analysis, and how to build financial models and more. It discusses how to excel in 14 different financial analyst roles and helps students understand which role they are most passionate about and how to get hired and promoted in the industry. Students are also taught Excel skills so they can model financial statements and value companies from scratch. There are several educational and interactive case studies including how an IPO works, how to manage risks and how to manage a portfolio.
This course is intended for anyone who wants to become a financial analyst, or a better investor, stock picker or portfolio manager. No prior experience is mandatory to take up this course.
The course comprises of 225 video lectures of more than 22 hours duration with 4 articles and 34 downloadable resources.
Key Highlights
- Learn about 14 different Financial Analyst jobs and how they overlap and work together (including Investment Banking, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Equity Sales, Equity Capital Markets, Private Wealth Management, Mutual Fund etc.)
- Become an expert in Excel for financial analysts
- Learn how risk management works
- Learn to analyze and understand an income statement
- Use and create Excel based templates to help you create financial statements from scratch (meaning income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements and more)
- Use and create Excel based templates to help you value companies using several different valuation methodologies, including P/E, P/R and Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)
- Learn how interest rates are changed and why this is crucial to understand for successful financial analysts
- How Monetary Policy and Fiscal Policy works
- Know where to get data in order to build a financial model
- Understand and use modeling best practices to create financial models
- Earn a certificate of completion to add to your resume
Duration : 22.5 hours on-demand video
Rating : 4.5
Sign up Here
4. Python & Statistics for Financial Analysis by Hong Kong University (Coursera)
Python is not only the number 1 programming language in Data Science but is also becoming quite popular in the financial industry. This course created by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology combines both Python coding and Statistical concepts and applies them to Financial Analysis, like analysing stock data. After understanding foundational concepts of statistics, students are taught to apply these concepts by means of Python packages and syntaxes to perform financial analysis.
At the beginning of the course, students learn how to import, pre-process and save financial data and how to manipulate existing data by generating new variables using multiple columns. In the later modules, learners are taught to predict stock return using regression models. Finally students learn to evaluate the performance of a model with statistics standards and financial standards such as Sharpe Ratio and Maximum Drawdown.
This is an intermediate level financial analysis course and students are expected to have a basic knowledge of python and probability. Jupyter Notebook environment has been set up on the course platform to allow students to practice python coding and financial analysis examples explained in the course. There is no need to install any client applications.
The course is intended for any learners who are interested in financial analysis using python. By the end of the course, students will be able to write their own python code to build statistical models to assist in financial analysis.
Key Highlights
- Learn to Import, pre-process, save and visualize financial data into pandas Dataframe
- Learn to apply the important statistical concepts (random variable, frequency, distribution, population and sample, confidence interval, linear regression, etc.) into financial contexts
- Build a trading model using multiple linear regression model
- Learn to ensure the accuracy and performance of your financial models by mode of evaluation using different investment indicators
Duration : 4 weeks, 3-4 hours per week
Rating : 4.4
Sign up Here
5. Financial Analysis Courses & Certifications (edX)
edX is an online learning platform that partners globally with best schools and educational institutions to deliver the desired knowledge and experience to learners. It includes a plethora of online finance courses from top academic institutions in the world that you can use to learn financial analysis and kick-start your journey to becoming a successful financial analyst. There are courses for all levels with ones that impart foundational financial analysis skills to the ones that explore topics in-depth. Most of these courses and training programs are free to audit. This means that you will have access to all the course training videos and assignments, but not get the certificate of completion. To earn a verified certificate, you will need to pay a small fee.
Some of the top choices for Financial Analyst courses include the following:
- Financial Analysis for Decision Making by Babson College – This course will take the mystery out of financial analysis and help you make the right business decisions. You will learn how to analyze business opportunities for their financial viability and secure funding to start and grow your business.
- Risk Management by New York Institute of Finance (NYIF) – This professional certificate program is a comprehensive survey of the practice of risk management. Here you’ll learn about the major types of risk, risk management tools and techniques and financial regulations.
- Corporate Finance by ColumbiaX – This professional certificate program in corporate finance teaches you the skills necessary to make sound financial and investment decisions. You will understand both the sound theoretical principles of finance, and the practical environment in which financial decisions are made, along with a complete framework for valuation.
- Accounting and Financial Management MicroMasters by UMGC and USMx – In this program you’ll gain hands-on experience in reporting and analyzing financial transactions of corporations. You’ll learn to perform financial analyses and modelling, assess risks and returns of alternative investments and make effective financial management decisions.
- Cash Flow Analysis by New York Institute of Finance (NYIF) – In this course, you’ll learn about the statement of cash flow: cash flow from operations, cash flows after investment, and cash flows after financing.
- Ratio Analysis by New York Institute of Finance (NYIF) – This course introduces you to the various ratios used for corporate financial analysis and teaches how to customize them to assess the creditworthiness of a company.
Key Highlights
- Get trained by world renowned instructors and top academic and industrial institutions
- The resources include individual Courses, Professional Certificates and Micromaster Programs
- Courses are designed with real world examples and case studies to give hands-on training to the learners
- The courses have flexible timelines and can be completed at your own pace
- Courses available for all skill levels – beginner, intermediate and advanced
- All course material available for free including video lectures, quizzes and exercises. Option to add a verified certificate by paying a small fee.
Duration : Self-Paced
Rating : 4.5
Sign up Here
6. Python for Financial Analysis and Algorithmic Trading (Udemy)
This course is a great introduction and overview of what financial analysis is and how Python can be applied for analysing financial data and for algorithmic trading.
This course has been created by Jose Portilla who has taught millions of students on Udemy on topics such as programming, data science and machine learning. He works as a corporate technical trainer for Fortune 500 companies, including some of the world’s largest banks and financial institutions. Jose has based this course off the same technical training material that he has used for personal corporate training at the world’s top financial institutions.
The curriculum of the course is very extensive and well-structured. It starts off with a basic crash course in Python for a quick review of the programming language, and then proceeds to cover the various core libraries used in the analysis, including numpy, pandas and matplotlib. Then it discusses how to work with time series data with Python, including working with the statsmodels library. It also covers how to use Python to obtain financial securities data, including pandas-datareader and the Quandl Python API. Students are also taught about Quantopian, one of the best platforms online for conducting algorithmic trading with Python.
With this course students get a variety of content, including video lectures, code and explanation notebooks and supplemental material. Although the course is for all levels, it is recommended that learners have a basic knowledge of programming in Python and also some knowledge of basic statistics and linear algebra.
Key Highlights
- Use NumPy to quickly work with Numerical Data
- Use Pandas for Analyze and Visualize Data
- Use Matplotlib to create custom plots
- Learn how to use statsmodels for Time Series Analysis
- Calculate Financial Statistics, such as Daily Returns, Cumulative Returns, Volatility, etc.
- Use Exponentially Weighted Moving Averages
- Use ARIMA models on Time Series Data
- Calculate the Sharpe Ratio
- Optimize Portfolio Allocations
- Understand the Capital Asset Pricing Model
- Learn about the Efficient Market Hypothesis
- Conduct algorithmic Trading on Quantopian
- Access to online Q&A forum and Gitter chat rooms to talk to fellow students
- Get a certificate of completion to add to your LinkedIn profile and share with potential employers
Duration : 17 hours on-demand video
Rating : 4.5
Sign up Here
7. How to Analyze a Wholesale Deal in Real Estate (Udemy)
This real estate financial analysis course teaches relevant concepts and tools that one needs to know in order to learn how to evaluate a wholesaling deal. It is a beginner’s course for learners with little to no background in real estate. It discusses vital foundational knowledge of real estate and covers how to run an investment analysis for a wholesaling deal. Students learn to calculate and interpret the most important numbers when analysing wholesaling deals. They also get custom built wholesaling deal calculator that simplifies the entire analysis process. This calculator helps to calculate accurate after repair values, maximum allowable offers, and track rehab costs estimates.
The developer and instructor of this course is Simon He, the bestselling real estate instructor on Udemy. Simon is an MBA graduate from Stanford University and has worked on dozens of multi-million dollar investment opportunities at a private equity fund. He has taught around 200K students on Udemy alone and has thousands of five-star ratings.
Key Highlights
- Learn some serious real estate investing knowledge, techniques, and tools
- Understand the difference between the 70% Rule and the Fixed Costs Method
- Learn about the Maximum Allowable Offer, why it matters, and how to calculate it
- Learn what the After Repair Value is, why it matters, and how to use comps to calculate After Repair Values (ARVs)
- Use a custom built wholesaling calculator to analyze your future deals
- Learn how to present a compelling pitch to potential investor buyers
- Learn how to pitch your property to a flip investor buyer or a buy & hold investor buyer
Duration : 1.5 hours on-demand video
Rating : 4.7
Sign up Here
8. Valuation & Financial Analysis For Startups by Yonsei University (Coursera)
Financial Analysis and Valuation is one of the most sought after skills today among entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and private equity companies. This specialization imparts in-depth knowledge of valuation and financial analysis of start-ups making students ready to analyse real-world start-ups.
This specialization has been developed by Hyun Han Shin, a professor of finance in Yonsei School of Business. He has over 25 years of experience in teaching finance and has several outstanding research awards and recognitions to his credit. In designing this course, he has combined both the theory of financial analysis and valuation and application of these in real world, so learners find it very useful with their daily business judgement. Saeyeul Park, his colleague at Yonsei School of Business is a co-instructor on this program.
The Startup Valuation and Financial Analysis Specialization teaches two of the most often used methods to find the value of a startup. Students learn how to find the value of founder’s ownership before and after additional funding, how to read financial statements and make pro-forma statements, and how to determine the financial health and status of a startup and estimate future earnings and value. Students are introduced to the various investment criteria, such as Net Present Value (NPV) and Individual Rate of Return (IRR) which are used to arrive at the valuation of a business.
This is a beginner level training program and has no prior experience requirements. So anyone new to accounting and finance can easily undertake this program. There are four courses followed by a capstone project. The four courses are expected to take 14 weeks and the capstone project approximately 3-4 weeks. Therefore the Specialization can be competed in 17-18 weeks.
Key Highlights
- Learn to make financial projections and use financial analysis to determine the value of a business
- Learn about the time value of money, discounted cash flows method, multiple method, financial statements analysis, free cash flows, capital budgeting decision rules and current trends
- Understand the financial statements such as balance sheet, income statement and cash flow calculation
- Learn how to use excel to find present value of future cash flows
- Learn using real world examples
- Capstone Project to find the value of startups using the methods taught in the course
Duration : 2 months, 11 hours per week
Rating : 4.2
Sign up Here
9. Excel Crash Course: Master Excel for Financial Analysis (Udemy)
This Excel financial analysis course is designed for anyone who wants to be a financial analyst or is already one, and is specifically tailored for financial analysts in investment banking, equity research, financial planning and analysis, private equity and corporate development. It covers all levels – from beginner to advanced users, and teaches everything you need to know about Excel for a career in corporate finance, including the tips, tricks, shortcuts, functions and formulas etc. It teaches Excel 2016 but Excel 2013 and Excel 2010 is also reviewed in the course.
The course starts with the basics covering the foundational skills needed, and once a solid base is built it progresses to advanced level with very sophisticated functions and formulas. Even experts will learn something new from this course.
The course is instructed by Tim Vipond, CEO of the Corporate Finance Institute, which is a leading financial analyst certification company that provides career-focused financial modeling training. Tim has over 15 years of experience in capital markets across a wide range of transactions and several other areas of finance including investment banking, investment management, corporate development, strategy and corporate finance. Tim has based this course on first-hand investment banking training programs at global banks. He is highly rated for the quality of content and instruction.
The course includes 3.5 hours on demand video and 2 downloadable resources. Completing this course will teach students industry leading best practices in corporate finance and help them speed up their financial modeling dramatically and make their financial analysis more powerful and dynamic.
Key Highlights
- Learn to perform professional level financial analysis in Excel
- Learn how to use industry best practices when building financial models in Excel
- Master shortcuts, functions, and formulas to save time and speed up your modeling skills
- Stand out in an interview or move up the ladder at work by dramatically boosting your Excel skills and confidence
Duration : 3.5 hours on-demand video
Rating : 4.4
Sign up Here
10. Financial Analysis: Introduction to Business Performance Analysis (LinkedIn Learning – Lynda)
This course is the first in a series of Financial Analysis courses on LinkedIn Learning by Rudolph Rosenberg and provides a quick primer on the key concepts of business performance analysis. This course focuses on practical techniques to analyze the PNL (profit and loss) of a company and get the insights needed to run a business. Understanding the data from profit and loss statements of a company helps to make informed decisions that benefit the company in the long run.
The instructor of the course Rudolph Rosenberg is a global leader in finance and business and brings his experience of over 20 years to this course. This is a relatively short course of a little over 20 minutes of video content and is meant to be an introduction to the key concepts that act as a stepping stone to Rudolph’s other following courses on Financial Analysis:
- Financial Analysis: Analyzing the Top Line with Excel – This course explores practical techniques to analyze the top line or revenue of a company. It teaches the financial concepts necessary to the understanding of revenue performance, identifies the sources of under or over performance and covers techniques using Microsoft Excel to gather, prepare, and analyze data that every company has access to.
- Financial Analysis: Analyzing the Bottom Line with Excel – This course talks about financial concepts necessary to the understanding of gross margin and operating expenses performance. It introduces students to the tools and techniques in Excel to prepare and analyze that data, including PivotTables and the invaluable SUMIF function. Plus, it teaches how to identify and analyze sales and marketing spending, staff expenditures, and productivity separately, so one can get a really clear picture of the data from multiple angles.
Key Highlights
- Explore the key dynamics you need to understand in order to interpret the performance of your business
- Learn how to use Excel for analysis of financial data
- Exercises to practice the concepts included in the course
- Access to all course material for free for 30 days trial period
Duration : 1 hour on-demand video
Rating : 4.5
Sign up Here
