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Day: January 22, 2019

How to Get Involved In the Blockchain/Fintech Space as a Student?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Blockchain developers are not in supply and are in high demand. The job of developing blockchain distributed ledgers for businesses was found to be the most growing sector. The payouts for a blockchain-developer engineer positions are accordingly high when compared to other software design engineers.
Developers with working knowledge and experience with iterations specific to blockchains such as Hyperledger Composer or Solidity are in great demand, and the demand spurs great payouts and salaries. Solidity tool is used to develop smart contracts and Hyperledger Composer the OS blockchain using JavaScript while REST API enables a codeless development of business networks. Etheruem framework knowledge is also highly appreciated. According to the US firm Upwork, blockchain developers are charging 200$/hour.

Learning Institutions.

Working knowledge of Java and Python is desirable. The blockchain technology being relatively new many Universities have started offering courses connected to blockchain technology only recently. They now offer the following courses:

  • Cryptocurrency design and engineering by MIT
  • Bitcoin Engineering by Stanford University
  • Ethereum Developer Certified Training program by B9Lab
  • Courses by Mountain View
  • Courses by Blockchain University, California.

You can also learn online and on your own, attend programs conducted by Block apps, Consensys, Ethereum Foundation, Linux foundation or Hyperledger. India too is not far behind, and you can take up Fintech courses on blockchain technology.
An introductory course on Hyperledger would be right for entrepreneurs who are looking for business opportunities, business enterprises wishing to learn if blockchain technology can be adopted by them, people working in fintech startups and students who have just graduated hoping to land a job in the fintech sector.
Choose what you wish to explore

  • Creating open-sourced blockchains
  • Creating business networks using the Hyperledger platform
  • Creating smart contracts using Solidity


Where the jobs are
The Fintech industry badly needs personnel in

  • Blockchain Technology
  • Digital Payments
  • Big Data handling
  • Digital Wealth Management
  • Analytics Solutions


Job roles available and in demand are for

  • Project Managers
  • Data management experts
  • Sales
  • HR
  • Financial experts in various fields like equity funding, debt capital markets etc.


Non-transferable skills will need to be developed and aligned with the enterprise’s needs. You must have the following traits.

  1. Interpersonal Communication skills are essential as you will be working in a customer oriented role no matter what services you offer
  2. Ability to solve problems creatively is vital when you have to innovative to be a market leader. There is no other way than to innovative on blockchain technology
  3. Collaborative team skills are crucial as most startups will have small teams
  4. Ability to work with ambiguity, under pressure, and with high demands from the startup environment
  5. Discipline and integrity since you will be working on financial transactions and have to work beyond the call of duty to succeed
  6. A good learner as there may be no standard operating procedures or norms of remuneration as yet

If you have your heart set on joining the fintech industry, then you need to start immediately to stay abreast of changes that will happen.

What Do You Need To Learn To Become A Financial Analyst?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

What Do You Need To Learn To Become A Financial Analyst?

The job role of a financial analyst needs a very thorough study of theory and the applicability of principles to practical situations. The best option is to do financial analysis courses and earn the CFA Certification.

Course Skills and requirements
A graduation degree or even a Master’s in Finance goes a long way. Add certifications that are relevant. Those from a non-financial background can also take these courses as most offer boot camps to bring you to speed.
Non-transferable skills will also need to be developed and aligned with the enterprise’s needs. You must have the following traits.

  1. Interpersonal Communication skills
  2. Ability to solve problems creatively.
  3. Collaborative team skills
  4. Ability to work with ambiguity, pressure, and demands from the startup environment.
  5. Discipline and integrity since you will be working on financial transactions.
  6. A good learner as there may be no standard operating procedures in financial interpretations.

Course advantages:
Depending on your career plan, resources, specialization choices, and eligibility here you can choose your certification. These have different prerequisites in terms of educational background, experience, and examinations taken to be finally added on to your resume. All of them provide you with a well-defined skill set meant to ensure you are industry ready and have the required skill sets.

The courses offer a good grasp of basics, concepts, theoretical knowledge, practical skills and certifications that could help enhance your resume and career. They also offer boot camps, short term workshops, and knowledge valuable to enter the industry. Another advantage in such a course is of mentoring by certified and experienced industry aces that helps garner the latest best practices, techniques, skills, and practice on the latest trending technologies in the financial industry.

While CFA certification definitely helps, you will need to be an excellent communicator and work diligently to acquire the best analytical and business skills. You will definitely need to add on technical skills in DevOps, IoT, Python, Machine Learning, Big Data, and Hadoop to aid your role and understanding as Financial Analyst.

Topics covered:
Here is what topics the financial analytics training courses cover. The course topics are covered in detail with case studies, practice assignments and quizzes.

  • How to use Excel
  • Undertake data analysis and manipulation in Excel
  • Basics and concepts in accounting
  • Analysis of financial statements
  • Inferences and forecasting methodology from financial statements
  • Valuation of business from financial analysis data
  • Dynamic and flexible financial model making
  • Data visualization charts in Excel creation and presentation
  • Accounting statements preparation for any company
  • Create balance sheet, cash flows statement and income statement from the basics onwards.
  • Ratio analysis from company financials preparation and interpretation
  • Using a framework to compare different companies financial performances
  • Creation of  financial models that are forward-looking and integrated
  • Forecast, extrapolate financial ratios which are forward-looking
  • Discounted Cash Flows application and techniques of valuation on an actual company performance data
  • Apply valuation technique of Multiples to a real-world company data
  • Presentation enhancing tools like PowerPoint

Conclusion:
A Financial analyst has to have a gamut of traits besides training which can be acquired through online refresher courses and extensive research. The importance of continued learning can never be stressed enough. Once you have your skills in place and your certification to validate you are industry ready, act on taking your skills to the next level.

What is the Easiest Way To Learn How To Analyze Financial Statements?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Financial professionals must know and learn financial analysis to be able to analyse the statements of finance of an enterprise effectively. This requires a financial understanding of the basic key regions as financial analysis courses will teach you. They are : 

  1. Financial statements structure.
  2. The market economics of the environment within which the industry operates
  3. The goals and strategies employed and pursued by the firm to stay ahead of the competition. The route to learn financial statements analysis lies in the below plan or strategy.Industry characteristics and economic factors considerations: Porter’s Five Forces or economic attribute analysis will help determine the activities performing in the chain.Ex creation of the product, its manufacture, the distribution channels, retail outlets, price, transportation costs and so on. You now do the value analysis of the chain.

    Company strategies identification: Look at the company’s product, its nature including the product uniqueness, profit margins levels, brand loyalty creation strategy, and cost control measures. Factors considered are the integration of the supply chain, diversity of geographic locations, industry etc.

    Quality of the statements of the organisation’s financial statements assessment: Assess the key statements for relevance within the boundaries of accounting standards. While examining the accounts pay attention to issues of recognition, classification, valuation in the balance sheet accounts to arrive at a proper assessment.

    The main focus area checks if the balance-sheet forms a complete and real picture of the economic position in the firm. In assessing the statement of income, the focal area is to make a true assessment of earning quality to be the representation of economic performance in the organisation.

    Profitability and current risks analysis: In this step, the financial professionals add value to the financial statements and assessment of the firm through the tools of financial statements.

    Common tools for analysis are ratios of the financial statement which are the key to debt management or coverage ratios, liquidity, profitability, asset management, risk management, and market valuation.

    Ask the two questions related to profitability namely regarding how very profitable are operations and how much profit accrues to shareholders of equity. This enables the forecasting of the future health of the firm.

    Preparation of financial statements and forecasts of financial statements:
    Financial professionals will find challenges in making assumptions that are reasonable when speaking of the health and the firm’s future in comparison to the comparative values of growth in the industry.

    They will then study the effects of funding and cash flows on these assumptions. Standardization techniques and approaches like sales percentile values help draw up the pro-forma of the financial statements.

    Firm Valuation:
    Discounted cash flow methodology is most often used from among the many approaches to assessment of firm valuation. Cash flow is assessed and valued in the context of projected and awarded dividends.

    More advanced and technical detailed analysis techniques use available cash-flows to the enterprise or shareholders of equity. Yet another way would be to use the value-added economics method of relative valuation and measures which are accounting-based.

    The final steps:
    On completion of the analysis, valuation and financial statements the integrity of testing is called upon. Are these figures real and true pictures of the firm’s finances and positions?

    Many representations are fudged, enhanced and irregularly reported making the final test critical and valuable to the forecasting and financial data analysis. The financial analyst needs to be an ace at recognizing manipulation, detecting frauds, and correcting the statements.

What is Blockchain Training?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

The technological advancements contributed by blockchains has led from the front to ensure swift changes in coding, cryptography and programming languages. Today’s industries need to keep up with the rapid strides, trends, and pace of technology.

This drives the demand for fast-adapting global business employees, experts, and professionals who need to equip themselves with state-of-art advanced courses and training to be more marketable, competitive and eligible.

The blockchain technology over the last decade has left a massive impact on all secure and transparent financial transactions and secure record-keeping including healthcare, public sector, real estate, and financial services to name just a few.

What is blockchain technology? 

A blockchain comprises of a chained block listing connected to each other through cryptography codes. The demand for blockchain experts is already at a high and is growing drastically by the moment as this technology has the potential and is widely believed to be reliable, secure and unbiased. Thus many blockchain training institutes and academies have mushroomed over the last few years.

The incessantly increasing demand for blockchain professionals guarantees great salary packages and quick career advancement for blockchain developers in the IT industry.

Cryptocurrency based blockchain technology evolving from the BitCoin technology uses hashtags and math problems encoded in every block of the blockchain. By embedding a part of the previous block’s code in every new block every transaction and block addition is verified across several interconnected nodes of PC’s which form a vigilant distributed network.

Every node verifies the transaction by providing the right solution to the query raised and hence such transactions are irrefutable, immutable and absolutely secure with time-tags and encryption too.

Blockchains eliminate the intervention of mediators in the transaction like large institutions, Governments, etc thereby, making it an open-source network which is easy to access.

The Bitcoin is the earliest form of digital cryptocurrency or virtual cash that is most widely accepted and traded in with a uniform global value unlike the various paper and fiat currencies which depend on different prices as per different geographic locations.

The Ethereum is the second most well-known cryptocurrency using blockchain technology which allows its users to build their own wallets and smart contracts by making use of its network to avoid complex coding processes needed to enable the building of smart contracts.

Features of Blockchains:

Bitcoin currency has been traded in Forex markets in many countries for over a decade. Just as the paper currency system is managed by the reserve and federal banks in the country, the blockchain manages cryptocurrencies. The explorer of blockchains records and maintains all Bitcoin transactions in a digital ledger of transactions connected in the chain to a secure sequence of hashtags.

Here are the important protocol and rules of the Bitcoin method, network, and blockchain.

  • Data is permanently stored: The software-based cryptocurrency is stored digitally and recorded making it difficult to dispute transactions in the wallet or account. Thus no unaccounted transactions and currency are present in the system.
  • Code rules all transactions: The blockchain is based and governed by its coding. Once recorded it cannot be changed or tampered with. Also, the digital records are available to the public and thus ensure a safe, immutable, recorded transaction.
  • No governmental, legal or regulatory involvement exists: The Bitcoin is devoid of third-party interference. It is a decentralized platform to ensure secure transactions digitally. When using the Bitcoin platform, currency or transactions ensure you get legal guidance.
  • The digital wallet has enhanced security and can be password protected: The wallet can store your keys and currencies securely and with encryption on hard drives, computer etc. It is best stored on a separate device to continue access even when your computer fails.
  • Access is only through your private key: The encrypted key is the only way to log in. Keep a backup of it safe and never lose it. If you do lose the key nothing helps as the blockchain recognizes only the key. You could lose your currency if you lose your key. Beware!
  • Use a reliable currency exchange platform: This protocol is essential to prevent hackers from gaining control to your information, currency and account. Though the system is encrypted and secure transactions are ensured, be careful to use a reliable platform for currency exchange, buying or selling Bitcoins.
  • Double check receiver address: Ensure receiver address as in a digital and decentralized system once you transfer to a wrong party there can be no charge-backs or support interventions.

Skills that can be acquired:

Blockchain training covers various topics embracing the core concepts in blockchain technology. The top-performing cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Bitcoin and multichain scenarios are envisaged and explained.

The core meaning of blockchain and its associated concepts are well-explained in blockchain training. Proper blockchain training provides an in-depth grasp about what the Bitcoin is about and how it works while connecting its users. It also enlightens one about the knowledge of how Etehreum’s platform is used for building smart contracts easily. Real-world blockchain scenarios are used to throw light on the concepts and future applications based on such concepts.

A comprehensive understanding of blockchain and the technologies involved therein can only be achieved by doing a course from bankable institutes like Imarticus. Undertaking a Blockchain Training program has become quintessential for freshers, software professionals like team leads, project managers, technology architects, and business analysts.

Considering the opportunities that await a person well-versed in blockchain technology, it is always a good choice to take up such courses at a reputed institute like Imarticus Learning and add the feather of blockchain certification to your career cap.

Conclusion:
The growth of Blockchain training online and its impact on various industries has led to an estimated 18% of world GDP through blockchain technologies. Once you master the fundamentals you will learn all about the hyper ledger, blockchain multi-chains, coding, cryptography, and smart contracts.

Easy understanding of the mechanism behind the top performing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethreum is also interpreted well in the blockchain training. As part of futuristic and new-age tech courses, the Blockchain technology training at Imarticus Learning also called the Fintech pro degree and blockchain training is sure to be profitable and a good career choice.