As the founder of Quantus Finance, I spend a lot of time thinking about how people learn financial modeling—and how technology, especially AI, might change that. Recently, I heard a story from someone in M&A about giving an intern a task that had taken them three hours to complete when they first started. The task? Scanning through ~50 private equity firms and identifying which of their portfolio companies could be potential acquirers for a sell-side mandate.
Back then, it meant:
Now? AI pulled the portco websites in 2 minutes. The intern then spent another 20 verifying details. The full task was done in under 30 minutes.
That’s the kind of efficiency gain that gets headlines. And yes—AI is reducing repetitive tasks in finance.
But here’s what doesn’t make the headlines: you still need to know what you're doing to get useful results.
1. AI Can Save Time — But Only If You Know What to AskThat intern wasn’t blindly prompting a chatbot. He knew:
In other words, he knew the context behind the task. Without that domain knowledge, the output would have been useless—or worse, misleading.
This is exactly what we emphasize at Quantus: you still need to learn the logic behind financial models, deal rationale, and valuation methods. AI can assist, but it’s only as effective as the instructions you give it.
2. Real-World Financial Modeling Isn’t Just Excel
In practice, building a financial model isn’t about plugging numbers into a template. It’s about:
AI doesn’t sit in on internal meetings. It doesn’t read the room when a client says, “Just give me the high-level numbers.” It can’t choose whether to use EV/EBITDA or EV/Revenue depending on the context of a fast-growing SaaS business vs. a stable manufacturing firm.
That’s the part of modeling that’s still deeply human. AI doesn’t replace the thinking part.
What This Means for the Future
If you’re in finance—or learning it—it’s tempting to ask: Do I still need to learn how to model if AI can build one for me?
My answer is: Absolutely.
Not because you’ll always need to build one from scratch, but because understanding why a model works is how you learn to:
In short: AI is your intern, not your MD.
Final Thought
At Quantus, we’re excited about the potential of AI. We've built tools like chatbots to help you understand financial terminology and how key formulas work. But when it comes to truly learning financial modeling, there’s no substitute for hands-on experience. You need to build models, test different assumptions, and understand how each decision impacts the outcome—and that’s exactly what we’re here to help you do.