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. 073What makes a good financial model?Modelling, Excel and dataIntermediatetechnicalFinancial modellingCorporate FP&A

   Say this

   Someone else can pick it up, understand it in ten minutes and change an assumption without breaking it. That means one input layer, consistent formulas across each row, no hard-coded numbers inside calculations, and checks that fail loudly.

   Then walk it

   1. Structure first: inputs, calculations and outputs separated, ideally on separate sheets. One assumption lives in exactly one cell and is referenced everywhere else. If a tax rate appears in three places, the model is already wrong.
   2. Consistency across the row. The same formula copied right across every period, no exceptions, so you can audit a row by checking one cell. A single different formula mid-row is the most common source of silent error.
   3. Formatting as a communication tool: blue for inputs, black for formulas, green for links to other sheets, units labelled on every row, and signs consistent so costs are always negative or always positive, never both.
   4. Checks that are visible. Balance sheet balancing to zero, cash flow tying to the balance sheet cash movement, sources equalling uses, and a single master check cell at the top of every sheet that turns red. A check nobody can see is not a check.
   5. Simplicity. Two hundred rows that a director understands beats two thousand that only you do. If a level of detail does not change a decision, it is cost without benefit, and the honest test is whether removing it moves the answer by more than one percent.
   6. And documentation: a cover sheet with purpose, version, author, date, source of each key assumption and a list of known limitations. In an audit or a diligence process that page saves days.

   Where candidates lose it

   Answering with a list of Excel techniques. The interviewer is asking about design for other people: one input layer, row consistency, visible checks, and restraint on complexity. Mentioning the single master check cell signals you have actually built models in a team.

   Expect next

   • How would you document a model for handover?
   • What check would you build first?
   • When is complexity worth it?
2. 076Your model has a circular reference because interest depends on debt and debt depends on cash flow after interest. How do you handle it?Modelling, Excel and dataHardtechnicalFinancial modellingCorporate finance

   Say this

   Three options: calculate interest on the opening balance instead of the average, use average balances with iterative calculation and a circuit breaker, or resolve it with a small macro. For most work I use opening balances, because the accuracy gain from averages is not worth the fragility.

   Then walk it

   1. The loop: interest expense reduces net income, which reduces cash, which changes the revolver balance, which changes interest. With average debt balances the formula genuinely refers to itself.
   2. Option one, opening balance interest. Clean, no circularity, and typically understates interest slightly in a growing debt year. State the simplification in the assumptions and move on. This is what I would do nine times out of ten.
   3. Option two, enable iterative calculation and build a circuit breaker: a switch cell that forces interest to zero, which lets you break the loop and reset when the model blows up into errors. Without the breaker a single bad input propagates hash-value errors through the whole file and you cannot recover it.
   4. Option three, a macro that copies the calculated interest into the input cell and loops until it converges. Precise, but it means the model needs a macro run to be correct, which is a real handover risk.
   5. The reason it matters beyond aesthetics: circularity makes a model unstable, and an unstable model in a live diligence or board process is a liability. Precision that comes at the cost of reliability is a bad trade.
   6. And the sizing argument I would make out loud: on a 500 crore debt balance at 9 percent, opening versus average balances might move interest by 1 to 2 crore, which is inside the noise of every other assumption in the model.

   Where candidates lose it

   Just switching on iterative calculation with no circuit breaker. That is how models become unrecoverable. Also, pretending average-balance precision matters more than stability shows inexperience; say which trade-off you are making and why.

   Expect next

   • How would you build the circuit breaker?
   • How much does the approximation actually cost you?
   • When would you insist on average balances?
3. 077What is your favourite Excel function?Modelling, Excel and dataCorephone / first roundSSState StreetTax · Boston · 2022

   Say this

   INDEX with MATCH, or XLOOKUP if the version supports it, because it looks up in any direction and does not break when a column is inserted. Give an actual function, then say what you built with it, because that is the part they are testing.

   Then walk it

   1. Why INDEX MATCH over VLOOKUP: VLOOKUP only looks right, it breaks silently when columns move, and it is slower on large ranges. That answer alone tells an interviewer you have maintained someone else's file.
   2. Then say where you used it. Something like: I used INDEX MATCH on two axes to map 400 cost centres to a reporting hierarchy, so a change in the hierarchy needed one table update rather than re-pointing 400 formulas.
   3. Have two more ready, because the real question is the breadth of your toolkit. SUMIFS for driver-based aggregation, which is the workhorse of any actuals-versus-budget pack. And a pivot table over a clean flat table, which is still the fastest way to interrogate a ledger extract.
   4. If they push further, the ones worth naming are power query for repeatable data cleaning, dynamic arrays like FILTER and UNIQUE, and OFFSET or CHOOSE for scenario switching, plus goal seek and data tables for sensitivity.
   5. And one thing to volunteer: I avoid volatile and hard-to-audit constructions. Nested IFs five deep, merged cells, and formulas that span sheets in long chains all make a model unmaintainable even when they work.
   6. The habit I would mention is building the data layer as one flat table with one row per transaction and no merged cells, because every reporting problem downstream gets easier if the source is clean.

   Where candidates lose it

   Naming VLOOKUP with no reason, or answering with a life philosophy instead of a function. Name one, say why it beats the obvious alternative, and attach it to something you actually built. That takes 30 seconds and passes the screen.

   Expect next

   • Why not VLOOKUP?
   • Show me how you would build an actuals-versus-budget pack.
   • What Excel habit do you consider bad practice?

   Reported by candidates at State Street (Tax, Boston, 2022). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

4. 078Tell me about your Excel and Python skills. What do you use each for?Modelling, Excel and dataIntermediatetechnicalSSState StreetGlobal Data · Boston · 2024

   Say this

   Excel for anything a human has to read, review or change, which is most of finance. Python when the data is too big, too messy or too repetitive for Excel, so extracting and cleaning, reconciliations across large files, and anything I have to run every month.

   Then walk it

   1. Be specific about Excel level. Not 'advanced' but what you can do: three-statement models with circularity handled, driver-based revenue builds, power query transformations, pivot-based reporting packs, sensitivity tables and data validation.
   2. Then Python with named libraries and a real use. Pandas for joining and cleaning, openpyxl or xlsxwriter to write the formatted output back to Excel, requests for pulling from an API. The example is what counts: I built a script that reconciled a 400,000-row ledger extract against a bank statement and produced an exceptions file, which replaced two days of manual matching each month.
   3. Say where you draw the line, because that is the judgement they are testing. A model the CFO will change the assumptions in stays in Excel. A monthly data pull with 15 transformation steps goes into Python. Putting business logic in a script nobody else can read is a handover risk, not a win.
   4. Mention SQL if you have it, because in most GCC and shared service roles the data sits in a warehouse and being able to write your own query removes your dependence on a reporting team.
   5. Add the visualisation layer if it is real: Power BI or Tableau, and specifically whether you have built a data model with relationships rather than just charts.
   6. And be honest about the level. Claiming Python and then failing a simple list-comprehension question is far worse than saying you are comfortable with pandas and still learning object-oriented work.

   Where candidates lose it

   Saying 'advanced Excel and basic Python' with no evidence. Name the functions, name the libraries, and attach one before-and-after with a time saving. Overclaiming is fatal because these questions are usually followed by a live test.

   Expect next

   • What would you never do in Python that you would do in Excel?
   • Do you write SQL?
   • Walk me through the logic of your reconciliation script.

   Reported by candidates at State Street (Global Data, Boston, 2024). 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.