Financial Analysis interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

42

Firms

28

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsMoody's7Bain Capital3SSState Street3AMAres Management2BLBlackRock2DED.E. Shaw2MSMorgan Stanley2Oaktree Capital Management2S&P Global2Bridgewater Associates1Citadel1FTFranklin Templeton1Golub Capital1HWHarris Williams1Houlihan Lokey1J.P. Morgan1Jane Street1MWMarshall Wace1Millennium Management1Morningstar1PIMCO1Sycamore Partners1TSTruist Securities1Two Sigma1Vanguard1WMWellington Management1Wells Fargo Securities1Wolverine Trading1

Topic

All topicsThree statements9Accounting policy and standards5Working capital and cash7Ratio analysis8Forecasting and budgeting9Variance and management reporting7Unit economics and costing8Capital budgeting7Cost of capital and valuation7Markets and rates5Modelling, Excel and data8Business partnering6Brainteasers and estimation4Fit and career10

Level

AnyCoreIntermediateHard

Type

AnyTechnicalCaseBrainteaserMarket viewFit

1. 031What does a complex revenue model look like, and how would you build one?Forecasting and budgetingHardtechnicalHoulihan LokeyInvestment Banking · New York · 2026

   Say this

   A complex revenue build is one where revenue emerges from several interacting drivers rather than a growth rate: cohorts, churn, pricing tiers, mix and capacity. You build it as a separate driver schedule feeding one revenue line, so the model stays auditable.

   Then walk it

   1. The structure I use: a driver tab with all assumptions hard-coded in one colour, a build tab that turns drivers into units and price, and a single revenue line that flows to the P&L. Nothing hard-coded in the build.
   2. For a subscription business the build is a cohort waterfall: opening customers, plus new adds, less churn, times average revenue per user, with ARPU differing by cohort and by plan. That gives you net revenue retention as an output rather than an assumption.
   3. For a capacity business it is capacity times utilisation times realisation, with a ramp schedule for new capacity. For retail it is store count times sales per square foot, with a maturity curve on new stores.
   4. The part that makes it complex rather than merely long is mix. Revenue can grow while realisation falls because the growth is in the cheaper tier. So I model mix explicitly and show blended realisation as an output.
   5. Then the controls. A checks row for every schedule, units reconciling to the previous period, revenue reconciling to the segment disclosure for history, and a one-page summary with growth decomposed into price, volume and mix.
   6. The discipline I would state: complexity has to earn its place. If adding a fourth driver does not change the answer by more than a percent or two, I take it out. A model nobody can explain in five minutes will not be used.

   Where candidates lose it

   Describing a big model rather than a structured one. The interviewer wants architecture: drivers separated from calculations, mix modelled explicitly, checks built in, and a justification for every layer of complexity. Volume of tabs is not sophistication.

   Expect next

   • How would you model churn for a cohort-based business?
   • How do you stop a model like that becoming unauditable?
   • Where would you hard-code and where would you formula-drive?

   Reported by candidates at Houlihan Lokey (Investment Banking, New York, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.