IIM Shillong Financial Modelling Championship
Tasks, Scores, Feedback and Learning Insight
Equitylevers partnered with Niveshak, the Finance and Investment Club of IIM Shillong, for “The GameStopper - Financial Modelling Championship 2021” as a part of their flagship Finance Fest, “FinWeekend.” The event was held on March 6, 2021.
We feel proud to congratulate the winners Manpreet Malik and Madhav Chadha from SSCBS and Karan Advani and Malika Asthana from IIFT and the Niveshak team for organizing this event and wish them the very best in their careers.
We have been running similar competitions with several colleges over the past 1 year. In this blog, we share key insights from contestant scores and also student feedback about our platform.
Participation
A total of 263 teams were enrolled. The contestants were from 160 Institutions from across the country. The colleges included both under graduate and post graduate and MBA programs.
Each contestant team was required to solve three simulations from EquityLevers Skill Library - financial modelling, analyzing Income Statement, and excel functions & errors.
The 3 assignments were given in test format and included 2 attempts for each contestants without study material and video solutions. They had about 6 hours to solve the assignments. (our Certifications offer study material, multiple attempts and video solutions)
Scores
Only 39 contestants were able to complete all 3 assignments
Average scores among these 39 contestants was 65% and only 14 scored above 75%
Average scores in each assignment was also around 65%.
What we learnt and our Mission
Many students participate in financial modelling competitions as it is a key skill they want to develop and demonstrate for placements. However, the low scores show that students lack practice and exposure. We also routinely use our simulations to select candidates for our firm. This saves us time and gets us best skilled employees. The results are always similar to the scores displayed above. Some key observations are as below:
Practical assignments are not difficult to solve, but only need effort and practice as most students learn on the job with time and effort.
Our mission objective is to provide exposure to students and learners to real practical work and accelerate the skilling. As a Chartered Accountant and ICWAI rank holder (early 1990s), it took many years after completing CA to gain confidence in practical skills in modelling. While there are many reasons for this delay including lack of effort on my part, one key reason was the lack of platforms where each user can practice a variety of finance skills.
Given easy access to laptops, good quality internet, it is now possible to provide easy access to personalized practical assignments to learners for skilling. The idea is a logical extension to text books, online websites and videos which all serve purpose in creating a useful learning environment.
Current practice is to buy financial database which the instructors and students use to create practical models. In our view, while this is very useful, it has three problems - One, a lot of time is spent in collating information (which in the present day of apps and softwares is not the number 1 skill to be developed) and consequently very little time is left for analysis and in the process students solve very few problems in the given course time. Second, in most batches a large number of students need additional help - these students will be vastly benefitted with more problems and practice assignments. Finally, any work done by students that can be carried in their resumes in the form of task and scores is very helpful to students build their confidence.
We applied to the NEAT program of Ministry of Education to get support for our new way delivering skilling solution. We are thankful that the NEAT evaluation panel resonated with our view on this issue and included us as part of NEAT platform that identifies and promotes technology solutions for skilling. We are also happy that several colleges including ISB, IIMs, BIM among others have used and found our products very useful.
Students View
Niveshak team of IIM Shillong floated a google form to collate feedback from students. We are happy that the response from 48 students is overwhelmingly positive. This also shows they are happy to take additional practice effort.
Specific Student Comments
Thank you.
About EquityLevers Skill Library
Welcome to the World’s First Online Library of real time finance projects to help “Learn by Doing” and “Get Job Ready”. Each simulation is built by practitioners and leading professors to create a complete job environment.
Our product is approved and included under the National Educational Alliance for Technology program of Ministry of Education, Government of India which shortlists best technology solutions for skilling.
About Product: This Skills Library provides real time projects with real data for most finance courses and jobs in the following subject domains - Investor Education, Personal Finance, Accounting, Financial Analysis, Corporate Finance, Bond and Fixed Income Markets, Valuation and Modelling Mutual Funds and Wealth Management, Managerial Accounting, Finance for Marketing and Operations Managers, Derivatives and Risk Management.
Key Features: Each simulation is embedded with technology features that help with personalisation, live data capture, scoring, certification, and anti-copying. Student gets scores for each input in the simulations and basis these scores, our algorithm issues web link certifications usable in resume and creates a tracking mechanism for professors. Read more details in this blog.
Affordable Pricing for Institutions: Complete access to NEAT (AICTE) approved Skill Library is available at just Rs 4000- 1800 per user for Academic Institutions (based on number of users subscription volume). This provides annual access to students and professors to use as certifications and tests. Kindly contact us for further details at founder@equitylevers.com