Fisher Works for Students
As an economics undergrad with no formal finance background, Fisher College of Business’ course structure has been highly valuable to me. Fisher splits the semesters into terms, and students take five courses each term. This allows me to take many courses and broaden my finance background very quickly and comprehensively. Thus, I’ve been able to take such electives as financial modeling and international finance, and for next term, private equity, enterprise risk management, and accounting for M&A, on top of core courses.
One invaluable elective I took last term was Financial Institutions with Dr. Isil Erel. Professor Erel is an expert on banking and capital requirements, and is heavily involved in research on corporate governance and M&A. This course focused heavily on the development of the financial services industry after the deregulation of the banking industry in the 1980s or 1990s, modeling the impact of interest rate changed on banks’ balance sheets, hedging interest rate risk, modeling credit risk, accounting for off-balance sheet items, the logistics of securitization of loans, and applying capital requirements. We also discussed the root causes and impacts of the financial crisis in 2008 and the responses of the regulators. Cases for the class focused on hedging interest rate risk with swaps and analyzing exchange rate ratios for bank mergers. While the final exam was quite difficult, I am now equipped with the tools to analyze more rigorously the risks facing financial institutions.
To supplement our course, Dr. Erel invited two bank executives, Don Kimble, Chief Financial Officer of KeyCorp, and Helga Houston, Chief Risk Officer of Huntington Bank, to speak to our class. During these sessions, these executives fielded questions about all of the topics we were learning in our course and covered additional topics, such as the importance of information technology innovation in the sector and reputational risk.
Dr. Erel and Financial Institutions are just one example of how students gain from Fisher’s programs—in many other courses, professors are providing us valuable real-world skills, putting us in situations where we need to perform, and introducing us to executives and alumni who can help us in the job search. Time and time again, Fisher is working for its students.