SMBC

Client background

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) and its group companies offer a broad range of financial services centred on banking.

As one of the leading banks in project finance, SMBC has successfully financed numerous projects across Asia, Australia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, North America and Latin America since it established its Structured Finance team in the early 1990s.

The Asia Pacific project finance team covers a large variety of key sectors with industry expertise and specialised dedicated teams providing project finance services. SMBC maintains “top five” bank status in Asia and are committed to ongoing employee development.

Requirements

SMBC made the decision to invest in project finance modelling training for their project finance employees. Despite having an internal learning & development department and experienced financial modellers in the project finance team, SMBC decided to invest in a third party course provider to ensure the right level of expertise, and experience, to scope and structure a training course that would provide an effective learning experience.

Requirements of the training included:

• A programme tailored to suit varying degrees of financial modelling experience
• Course content based on live models in a real deal environment
• Implement a standardized approach to financial modelling across the organisation

Why Corality?

Given Corality’s track record of introducing best practice consistency in financial models for other large organisations, SMBC found it to be an easy decision. Of particular note to SMBC, was Corality’s deep understanding of how banks use financial models.

“Corality immediately understood what our learning objectives were and tailored the course to suit our specific needs in the context of project finance cash flow modelling. A key factor in our decision to engage Corality was that the trainer had practical experience in cash flow modelling for project finance and was not just an academic cash flow modeler,” says Mark Giblett, the then Group Head of Project Finance

SMBC valued Corality’s experienced modellers and their up-to-date, real project consulting experience which ensures that the trainers and the model methodology are up to date with market developments. According to Giblett, “this practical, hands-on, experience with live models, in a real deal environment, rather than academic cash flow modelling – which we can all do ourselves straight from a textbook – means that Corality has an in depth understanding of the way banks approach modelling and what we, and our clients, want to get out of the models.”

Corality worked closely with SMBC to scope their requirements and design a course that was tailored to suit the needs of the project finance team. This was a distinct advantage for SMBC. “Many of the course providers we looked at offered a very rigid course in order to appeal to a broad range of people from different sector backgrounds. We wanted a course that was flexible, and tailor made to meet our specific objectives, and Corality was able to provide that,” explains Giblett.

The four-day programme was developed to suit the varying degrees of experience in SMBC’s project finance team through a combination of best practice project finance modelling and advanced project finance modelling. “The course went from beginners project finance modelling, right through to advanced project finance modelling. This flexibility was such that, for a certain period of time, suited everyone’s level” says Giblett.

Benefits to SMBC

• Carefully scoped, tailor made training programme
• Cost effective, hands on training solution
• Beginner to advanced training
• Active industry professional trainers
• Best practice financial modelling methodology
• User friendly models that benefit clients

Since facilitating that first course, SMBC have used Corality for numerous financial modelling training courses for their teams globally.

Project delivered by Corality Financial Group before the Mazars acquisition in 2016