When Tim Vipond was asked to help rebuild Newmont Goldcorp’s corporate model, the scale was daunting: “20 tabs across… each tab being many hundred rows deep,” he tells us. The model had to account for the intricate economics of mining—from extraction to refinement—and it all had to tie together in a single consolidated NAV model. It was a hands-on assignment that tested both his modeling expertise and his capacity to navigate complexity.
That moment, Vipond tells us, helped shape his understanding of what finance professionals truly need: not just theory, but real-world, applied skills. It’s an insight that stayed with him as he transitioned from the capital-intensive world of mining to the fast-moving e-commerce space at Shoes.com. The contrast deepened his appreciation for digital business models—and sparked the idea that would eventually become the Corporate Finance Institute (CFI).
Read MoreVipond didn’t plan to launch a training platform. “I was passionate about it,” he tells us, recalling how he began building and teaching modeling courses on his own. A chance connection with MDA Training led to the idea of transforming in-person financial training into self-paced, online learning.
Today, CFI has nearly 3 million registered students, with certifications like FMVA and FPAP tailored to match real job descriptions. The company embeds AI into courses like “Advanced Prompting for Financial Statement Analysis,” partnering with industry experts to stay current. For Vipond, the mission is clear: make high-impact learning affordable, practical, and scalable—so finance professionals can lead with confidence in a changing world.
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CFOTL: I think it would be helpful for all of us to understand CFI today—the size, the weight class it’s in. Can you give us some specs on the organization?
Vipond: Yeah, happy to. I’m very proud of what we’ve built over the last 10 years. We have close to 3 million registered students who’ve come through the platform. That platform includes 250 courses representing more than 500 hours of video training. The topics are wide-ranging but still focused within corporate finance as the core skill set.
We’ve also created certification programs that have become quite popular and well-regarded. The two big ones are the FMVA—that’s Financial Modeling and Valuation Analyst—and the FP&A Professional certification, which focuses on financial planning and analysis. These programs usually include around 15 courses and take about 40 to 50 hours to complete. So that gives you a general overview of the platform and how it works.
CFOTL: What was the opportunity you saw? Clearly, there are other organizations—some over 100 years old—offering training in areas like management accounting. What are you doing differently? What’s the opportunity?
Vipond: Great question. A few things stand out. First, we’re focused on super practical or applied learning. Instead of memorizing theoretical information and regurgitating it on a test, we require learners to apply what they’re learning.
So, for example, it’s one thing to memorize the formula for weighted average cost of capital. It’s another to go into Excel, pull the assumptions you need, calculate the cost of capital, and then use it in a model. That’s the kind of hands-on experience we emphasize.
Second, it has to be online and self-paced.
And third, we’ve leaned into job description mapping. When you look at real job postings, they don’t just ask for financial modeling—they ask for dashboards, data visualization, storytelling, and tools like Anaplan or DataRails. We thought, let’s cover all of that. So we built programs that combine technical tools with softer skills like visualization and storytelling. That combination makes for a really exciting, relevant curriculum.
CFI Education | www.corporatefinanceinstitute.com | Vancouver Canada