FinPod

Meeyeon (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of What's New at CFI. Today I am joined by Ryan Spendelow, VP of Content and Curriculum at CFI. You have heard and seen him here many times before and we are talking about one of my personal favourite topics which is PowerPoint and pitch books and our latest course on them. Now Ryan, I would like to ask you

I know the answer, think. I think a lot of us know that these are key skills in finance, but what motivated CFI to create a course very specifically focused on PowerPoint and pitch books? It's a specific topic.

Ryan (00:39)
Yeah, that's a great question to start with, So one of the things that we consistently hear from employers is that strong financial analysis isn't just enough these days, right?

So analysts also need to communicate their analysis clearly to decision makers and quite often quite senior decision makers. And this is often through presentations or pitch books. So in investment banking or corporate finance or even capital market roles, a huge amount of work revolves around building pitch books and...

Well pushbooks that present complex financial insights, but in a way that clients and other stakeholders can quickly understand. So we designed this course to kind of bridge that gap.

Meeyeon (01:27)
And for those of us that might not be familiar with the term pitch books, ⁓ would you mind briefly saying what is the difference between like a client presentation and a pitch book? Is there one?

Ryan (01:41)
Yeah, there is. So technically a pitch book is a type of presentation. ⁓ It's...

often not given as a presentation itself. It's often given in the form of a book and hence the term pitch book. And a pitch book ⁓ is a presentation or a book or an information pack that an investment bank, typically investment bank, will put together to pitch an idea to investors or perhaps pitch an idea to sell a business to ⁓ a ⁓ series ... I want to start that again. Right.

Meeyeon (02:16)
Okay,

I can ask that again.

Ryan (02:18)
Yeah, do that again.

Meeyeon (02:20)
And I know that pitch book is a buzzword we've used and heard it many times before, but just in case there are listeners that are with us today that haven't heard that term specifically, what is the difference between any presentation, any client presentation versus a pitch book? What makes a pitch book a pitch book?

Ryan (02:40)
Yeah, great question, Leon. So a pitch book is an information pack that typically an investment bank will put together to pitch their ideas for a specific type of deal to a stakeholder. And that stakeholder might be another business or it might be an investor. So for example, the pitch book might be pitching an &A transaction. It might be pitching a capital raising. It might be pitching a divestiture of part of a business. And often these pitch books

follow a fairly, I wouldn't say a standard framework, but there's similarities in pitch books, right? So they'll have a summary section, they'll have a transaction analysis, they'll often have a summary of the investment bank and the tombstones that that bank has been involved with. So we go through all of that in this course. ⁓ But the course also does more than just teach people what a pitch book is, for example. It teaches technical PowerPoint skills, we review things.

like the design and structural conventions that are used in real world finance, pitch books and presentations. So the goal here is really to help learners produce materials, whether it be a pitch book or a more general presentation that meets professional standards in both investment banking and corporate finance environments.

Meeyeon (04:00)
And generally for, so when I helped prepare pitch books, so the thing is it depends on what the deal is or what the potential deal that is being pitched is, but a pitch book can be, it can be very thick, it can be fairly skinny, but as a either a junior analyst or an associate on the client file, the section that you directly contribute to might be a fairly small piece. It might be maybe like three to four slides and then

the bulk of it might come from other groups depending on what it is. So for example, if you're looking at a capital raise and it's like an equity capital raise, you might get most of that pitch book from your ECM colleagues if you are in the client coverage group. But the pitch book is generally something that generally it's not one analyst that produces the whole thing. Usually it's quite an undertaking. It's providing different perspectives from different areas of the bank depending on what's being pitched. But that pitch book is like

One thing is, I don't think it's changed since I was in banking, but it is printed in colour, it is bound, it is nice, and you're generally responsible for kind of one small or medium-sized section of it. So for pitch books, don't think that you're going to be one person producing a whole thing. It's usually various different groups coming together on it. And that's also why it's such an important skill, because everyone's doing it. Everyone's contributing towards this document that goes off to a client, and hopefully they end up choosing.

your team to go through with the deal. ⁓ But to that effect, why are pitch books such an important skill for finance professionals, particularly early on in their careers?

Ryan (05:43)
Yeah, another really good question. And you've alluded to the fact that a pitch book is a big undertaking, so one specific person might be responsible for putting together the whole pitch book. But it's still important, it's still a really important skill for ⁓ finance professionals, particularly early in their career to come to grips with. And that's because...

in many finance roles. And as we said, particularly in investment banking or corporate development, the pitch book is really the primary way that ideas are communicated primarily to clients, but also internally. As a financial analyst, you might spend days building financial models, valuations, or some kind of other strategic analysis. But ultimately, that work needs to be translated into a really clear story.

that senior stakeholders can act on, whether internal or external. So a well-structured pitch book does exactly that. It organizes the narrative. It organizes the story from a company overview to ⁓ industry analysis to valuations and recommended transactions so that these decision makers can quickly understand the logic behind the recommendation. So...

Early career analysts often underestimate how important the skill is, but in reality, presentation quality can significantly influence how your analysis is perceived.

Meeyeon (07:17)
Yeah, and I find that it's such an important kind of like formative years of a finance professional, particularly in investment banking on the advisory side, mainly because kind of like I would say, you know, I've said this analogy several times, know, math is not a spectator sport. You have to solve problems. You have to model and excel if that's your wheelhouse. have to do all these things practically hands on to understand it.

And pitch books is no different. We say the term pitch books, but it really is just the art behind being able to communicate financial analysis in a really clear and cogent manner. And there is no better time to practice that when you are the analyst, which is generally where ⁓ more senior professionals expect you to do a lot of learning. Learning that often comes with some mistakes here and there. ⁓ Today we have

lots of AI tools to help you make those mistakes and the privacy of your own desktop before managing directors see it. But pitch books, ⁓ I think, as you've hit on are such an important skill for early, early finance professionals because it really does set up the foundation of how strong your base skills are. So you could climb that ladder, so to speak.

Ryan (08:36)
Yeah, for sure.

Meeyeon (08:37)
But there are, ⁓ and I remember them vividly myself, because I didn't have the help of AI tools. But what do you think are some common mistakes that analysts make when they're creating these presentations or pitch books that ⁓ they could use a heads up on so that they don't have to make that mistake?

Ryan (08:57)
Yeah, yeah, the last thing you want to do is create a pitch book or spend hours, you know, being involved with the group that's creating the pitch book and there's a mistake in there or your MD isn't very happy with it. I get... Oh, for sure.

Meeyeon (09:10)
It's also because it's like the impression you leave behind, right? It's like you could do a

wonderful demonstration. You are really sharp and such a great communicator, but you don't want to, it's like, by the way, here is everything that we talked about so that you can go and review the analysis, blah, blah, blah. You don't want to hand them something with a bunch of errors because that's what they keep from you.

Ryan (09:31)
Yeah, yeah, areas and things like that are just the ultimate no-no in a pitch book or presentation in investment banking and corporate finance. just back to your point, there are a few mistakes we sometimes see. Hopefully we don't see many of them because these are really high stakes things. so, hopefully people preparing pitch books and presentations are spending a lot of time making sure that there aren't any mistakes. But some of the things we see are things like poor structure.

Particularly in presentation. So a presentation might contain great information, but without a logical flow like ⁓ having clear section breaks or including a timeline if it's a pitch book, it becomes really difficult for the audience to follow the argument. So that's the first thing, ⁓ poor structure. The next thing which can be really small, but once it's noticed, it really stands out is inconsistent formatting.

small details like not having perfect alignment, not having consistent fonts, inconsistent colors that might deviate from the bank's internal style guide. They may seem minor, but they make a presentation look really unprofessional really quickly. And I guess the third mistake is trying to fit too much information onto a single slide.

Finance professionals often want to show everything that they've done, but the best presentations focus on clarity. So things like using visual aids, charts, and hierarchy on the slide or on the page to guide the audience to the key message. And those are exactly the types of skills that we try to develop in this course.

Meeyeon (11:20)
And I'll share a mistake that I made very early on in my career. It's super, super simple. But keep in mind, when I was going into my investment banking role, I was on the client side prior to it. So I wasn't making presentations. I didn't have that practice. And my thing was, with my first presentation, just being aware of all of the areas that a single output is in that presentation. Super basic. But for example, if one number shows up,

on slide one and you show it again and slide 10 it better match. so like little things like that typically like you know they're built into models you'll have various checks that flag that this is not the right ⁓ like your numbers aren't matching but doing a final review and having the kind of the checklist for even some of the most basic things like that numbers tying together huge huge benefit and a mistake that you don't need to make if you've listened to this.

Ryan (12:16)
Yeah, hopefully not.

Meeyeon (12:18)
And of course, you know, with the rise of AI tools, you could probably avoid that even just by getting a language model to go through your presentation if you are allowed to at your workplace. But with the rise of AI tools and the plethora of them that we have today, how do you see presentation creation changing for analysts today? Because for when I was in the industry, you know, the banks provide you a template, right? So for example, they're not giving you they're not going to say like,

open an empty PowerPoint file and then like start. When you open the PowerPoint file, there is going to be a theme that the bank has, all the colouring, all the fonts, the general layouts that you can use. And they generally give you a pretty, like pretty well-defined sandbox for you to exercise your creativity within. ⁓ But with so much assisted AI tools today, how do you see presentation creation changing? Because back then it would be like you'd get a standard set.

of slides that they conform to the bank's theme and standards. And then you just kind of do little things here and there. But now you can, there's just so much more that can help.

Ryan (13:28)
Yeah, and AI is definitely starting to change how presentations are created. But this is more so, and particularly, in the early stages of the process. So there are presentation AI tools now that can help analysts generate a first draft or an outline of a presentation really quickly. And this removes a lot of the friction of starting from a blank slide.

But where AI still falls short is understanding things like context, nuance, and still accuracy, especially in finance where these small details really do matter. So analysts still need to review the numbers. They need to refine the narrative, and they need to ensure that the slides align with ...

the firm's templates like you've alluded to, and also ⁓ client expectations. in practice, AI has become more of a productivity accelerator. It helps the analyst move faster through the early mechanical parts of building the slides. ⁓ But the judgment, the analysis, ⁓ and ultimately the responsibility for accuracy still comes from that finance professional.

Meeyeon (14:36)
Yeah, and if anything, maybe all of these AI tools helps people accelerate even just their creativity. I think over the years, what I found out was the more presentations that I see, whether they're from, you know, like, buy-side clients or various parts of an investment bank, maybe the M &A team that I've never worked with or power and utilities.

just going through their presentations and not necessarily even looking at the numbers, but looking at how certain data is presented, where they've decided to use what types of graphs has been incredibly helpful in me, like have building my toolkit of what I can use to present data. And I think that maybe AI tools, if I were back in that seat, I would be able to just access more slides rather than just kind of going through the ones that I am allowed to look through at work.

And so it just creates a lot more opportunity for learning in the kind of on the go at any time.

And last but not least, I have to ask you as the author of this course, personal questions related to the topic. How did you personally develop your pitch book and presentation skills during your career?

Ryan (15:51)
The hard way through making mistakes and the pressure of getting it right and having a very, very demanding boss who also was a Kiwi, funnily enough. But he had extremely good eye, a strong eye for detail and I thought I had a good eye for detail but nothing prepares you.

Meeyeon (16:02)
You

Ryan (16:16)
for the responsibility of pitching in a financial environment to having to make it past my first manager. So we had a sandbox of internal templates and I remember making a couple of mistakes, small mistakes, and he picked up on it and I realized that...

moving from maybe an academic environment at university to a professional environment, the standards are just so much higher ⁓ and you can never ever check enough times. So there's a saying, you know, from... ⁓

from the carpentry trade that you measure twice and cut once. In other words, just check, check, many, many times before you have to ⁓ present. yeah, it's just being in that environment and understanding the high stakes nature of it and the responsibility that comes with it that was a really steep learning curve for me early in my career.

Meeyeon (17:02)
Hahaha.

And last but not least, what do you personally enjoy about teaching presentation and communication skills? Like I would say PowerPoint design is very much communication skill. What do you enjoy personally about teaching this topic to finance professionals around the world of CFIs?

Ryan (17:31)
Yeah.

That's a great question to finish on. I've taught presentation skills, designed online courses, and taught this subject actually in the class in financial institutions. What I like so much about this topic is that it's a real career differentiator. It's a real career enhancer because ...

Some people describe presentation skills as a soft skill, but I don't like that. It's interpersonal skills and what sets people apart particularly early in their career is You know if you are working in a bank if you're working in an asset manager, you know ⁓ a buy side investor

you've got lots of people that are very, very good at the technical skills. They can build valuation models, they can... ⁓

you know, do all sorts of really impressive things from a technical point of view. But the people that stand out are the people that have really strong interpersonal skills. And the foundational interpersonal skill is communication. So what I like teaching about this subject the most is that this is really one of the topics and one of the areas that you can really differentiate yourself if you build these skills, because you will stand out amongst your colleagues very quickly.

Meeyeon (19:00)
And regardless of whether you're actually building the actual pitch book, which is very traditional to an investment bank, or you're an FP &A or general corporate finance, this course is truly for everyone. It doesn't matter the topic that you're trying to communicate. What matters is the content of this course. It's going to help you become the most effective and professional polished communicator in PowerPoint, which is such an important skill.

and it just happens to be the backdrop that we're teaching it against, which is pitch books. if you at any point in your career would like to practice your PowerPoint pitch book building skills in whatever context that you're working in, this course is for you and I hope that you will all take this course and that it will be the best decision you've made this year in 2026 so far. But until, until next time, we will see you very soon.