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The Challenge

GFMI’s client, an alternative credit and fixed income investor (hedge fund), brought a group of new associates, who worked in different geographic locations, on board. Though the new associates held varying levels of capital markets knowledge, the firm had no formal analyst/associates’ program in place. In addition, the firm did not want the associates “off the desk” all day. Accordingly, the client wanted a solution that would introduce course participants to a broad array of capital market topics, working within the time and geographic constraints.

GFMI’s Recommendation

GFMI met with senior management and discussed their learning objectives for the new associates. GFMI then created a course outline, which included an introduction to capital markets, economics, bond valuation, risk metrics, securitization, and derivatives. GFMI shared the outline with senior management and made changes where appropriate, in order to focus on the areas that would be more relevant to the new associates.

The Solution/Implementation

To ensure the new hires were not off the desk all day, GFMI recommended a live, virtual instructor-led training solution, segmented into 3-hour-long sessions each morning for a week. GFMI then created the course material in conjunction with the client’s senior management to ensure close adherence to the client’s learning objectives. Finally, GFMI delivered the content via our virtual learning classroom platform. To maintain participant engagement and drive learning outcomes, the course leveraged exercises, polls/knowledge checks, and case studies.

Results

Based on the participants’ self-rating, knowledge levels increased, on average, 49%! Verbal feedback from the line and the traditional written feedback was excellent. Some of the course features most valued included:

  • Ability to ask questions both verbally and in the chat function
  • Getting a solid introduction in general to Fixed Income
  • More technical explanations of components used in modeling instruments such as structured finance transactions
  • Becoming familiar with commonly used terms – describing them and going into what they mean
  • The knowledge checks were very useful