Finance for Non-Finance Professionals

Are you a non-finance executive or board director who would like to improve your understanding of finance? Would you like to improve your decision making, demystify the financial accounts and be better able to analyse financial data? Would you like to better understand shareholder value, company valuation, risk and return and financial performance measures? 

Most decisions in an organisation depend on financial data and some financial acumen, so improving your financial skills is essential for all senior executive and board positions.

GCC BDI is offering live online finance for non-finance professional tutorials on any of the following topics for in-house groups. This is a series of 5 online live tutorials. All modules will include practical work to be completed before the tutorial. There will be two weeks in between each module to allow for learning and for some light tasks to be completed before the next one.

Online tutorial format:

  • Finance for non-finance tutorials has series of 5 online live tutorials.
  • All modules will include practical work to be completed before the tutorial. There will be two weeks in between each module to allow for learning and for some light tasks to be completed before the next one.
  • You can decide to take all 5 tutorials or to pick and choose.

Key takeaways from the online series:

  • Fundamental and practical finance and accounting basics and how to apply them to your organisation
  • Understanding of key financial statements
  • How to analyse company accounts and company performance
  • Understand company valuation, risk and return, key performance measures
  • Best practices of financial management best practices
  • Use discounted cash-flow principles and net present value (NPV) techniques to perform successful project appraisals
  • Understand financial ratios and its implications in various decisions
  • Understand what is working capital management
  • Make informed, valuable contributions to board-level discussions with new expertise and a deeper understanding of financial reports
  • Develop critical finance skills to accurately identify future problems and successfully exploit new opportunities

Topic of online tutorial series:

  • Introduction to Finance and Accounting

This tutorial provides basic principles of accounting. Participants will learn about profit and cash, the difference between amortisation and depreciation, learn how to read key financial statements, understand how cost structures affect profit, what is break even and operational gearing, budget management and introduction to working capital management.

  • Finance and Accounting

Participants will learn how to read more complex financial statements and annual reports, understand the concept behind "Time value of money", learn cost of capital and strategic capital allocation, the correlation between risk and return, and assessing capital projects.

  • Assessing Financial Health

This tutorial looks at the financial health of the organisation. The outcome from this tutorial is participants will know how to use assessment frameworks and financial ratios, understand how professionals assess financial performance, analyse cash flows - EBITDA and free cash flows, differentiate between cash burn and debt capacity, interpret company valuations and different methodologies, creative accounting and the concept behind "hide and seek".

  • Finance for directors

Participants will understand the process of choosing a CFO to run the organisation and the duties and responsibilities of directors on finance matters, gain a good foundation on the components of a good financial strategy, understand the links between strategy and shareholder value, assess the performance of the finance function, manage external advisors and auditors, and understand the role of the audit committee.

  • Financing Decisions

The outcome from this tutorial is participants learning the different types of finance available, capital structuring, equity listing, investor relations issues, dividend policies, private equity and understanding how to raise bank loans and how banks assess loans.

Facilitator: Jean Pousson

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Jean Pousson is a Senior GCC BDI External Associate with over 30 years of board and management consultancy, board evaluation, training, facilitation and coaching experience, working across more than 30 countries. He is also a lead trainer for the IOD UK, following a 15-year banking career with Barclays where he spent many years assessing the risks of small to medium sized businesses and then larger corporations. Jean has also sat on many boards and has directed a number of change initiatives.

Jean works with boards on board evaluations, strategic health checks as well as various training and consultancy services for an international client base. In a typical year Jean will work with over 600 directors and about 8 to 10 boards. He is a regular contributor to strategy and finance programmes run by UK The Institute of Directors and also with Vistage ,the San Diego based network of global CEO’s.

Jean has a B.Comm degree from the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), is a Chartered Member of The Institute of Bankers in South Africa (CAIBSA), has a Postgraduate Certificate in Business Administration from The University of Warwick,and holds the Certificate and Diploma in Company Direction from the UK IOD.


Certificates and CPD points
All participants will receive a GCC BDI e-certificate of participation for each tutorial and each tutorial will qualify for 2 CPD points.

Contact us

If you need more information or would like to learn more about the online tutorial series, please contact us directly on +971 4554 7967 or via getinvolved@gccbdi.org.