{"id":6409,"date":"2026-05-25T19:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T13:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thewallstreetschool.com\/blog\/?p=6409"},"modified":"2026-05-25T17:18:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:48:39","slug":"ca-final-to-finance-analyst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewallstreetschool.com\/blog\/ca-final-to-finance-analyst\/","title":{"rendered":"From Bank Audits to Financial Modeling: A Conversation with Arihant Jain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Arihant Jain does not fit the usual mold of someone pivoting into finance. He did not come from any tier 1 or 2 college, he did not have a relative in the industry and even did not have a clear plan before he started. What he did was seven years of grinding through audit files, tax notices and compliance work at a CA firm in Noida, a CA Final under his belt and a growing feeling that there was a bigger world of finance he had not touched yet. He enrolled in our flagship course financial modelling, learned advanced excel shortcuts and valuation from the ground up and he recently placed at Alphas konsulting as a Credit Analyst<\/a>. We sat down with him to talk about the road so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You spent close to seven years in audit and tax work. What was that like and when did you start feeling like you wanted something different?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, the first few years were quite good. When you are an article assistant at a CA firm, you are thrown into everything. I was filing income tax returns, doing stock audits, handling EPF registrations, going out to bank branches for statutory audits. Bank of Baroda, PNB, branches with turnovers of 600 crores plus. At 20, that exposure is genuinely valuable. You learn how the numbers on a balance sheet actually come to life.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after a point, the work starts to feel like a loop. The compliance calendar repeats itself every year. GST filings, TDS returns, advance tax, scrutiny notices. You get good at it, very good actually, but you also realize that you are always looking backwards at what happened. I wanted to understand how people decide what should happen next. That shift in thinking is what started pulling me toward financial modeling and valuation<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Motilal Oswal stint is interesting because it sits a bit outside the typical CA track. How did that come about and what did you actually do there?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That came through a business partner arrangement, so it was not a direct Motilal Oswal role, to be clear. I was working with a partner firm out of Noida. The work itself was split between two things. One side was the compliance and regulatory piece, making sure GST, TDS and income tax filings were on time, managing SEBI and RBI guideline adherence, that sort of thing. That part felt familiar.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other side was more interesting. I was handling capital market transactions for HNI clients directly on terminal platforms. Mutual fund transactions, managing reconciliation across CAMS and Karvy portals. When you are executing transactions for high net worth clients in real time and managing portfolios, you start thinking very differently about money. You are not just recording what happened, you are watching decisions get made in the moment. That experience definitely pushed me to take the modeling course more seriously.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me about The WallStreet School FMV Course. You are doing it full time right now. What is that actually like day to day?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is intense. I started in January this year and it is a full-time commitment. The program covers company valuation end to end, so trading comparables, precedent transactions, DCF modeling, private and public company valuation. You are also building fully integrated three-statement models, so income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement all linked together, with sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis on top.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I did not expect was how much of the work is sector research. You spend a lot of time doing peer benchmarking, industry analysis, figuring out how to profile a company properly before you even touch the model. I have been preparing investment notes and valuation summaries as part of the coursework. It has genuinely changed how I read a set of financial statements now. I cannot look at a company’s numbers without thinking about where it sits relative to its peers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have a CA Final background. Does that actually help you in this kind of work or is it a completely different skill set?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It helps more than people think. The accounting foundation is real. When I am building a three-statement model, I am not confused by how the cash flow statement ties back to the balance sheet or why certain items sit where they do. A lot of people who come into financial modeling from an MBA or engineering background have to spend time just understanding the accounting logic. I already have that.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where it is different is the mindset. In audit work, you are trained to verify and report. In modeling, you are making assumptions and defending them. You have to be comfortable saying, I am projecting this company will grow revenue at 12 percent over the next five years, and here is why. That confidence in forward-looking assumptions is a skill you build separately. The CA training does not give you that. The Wall Street School work is where I am developing it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has been the hardest part of this transition for you personally?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The positioning, honestly. When you tell someone you are a CA with seven years of audit experience who now wants to work in equity research or transaction advisory, there is a credibility gap in their head. They think of you as a compliance person. Breaking out of that perception takes effort.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is part of why I took the full-time program rather than doing it on the side. I wanted to be able to say I did this properly, not as a weekend hobby. The modeling certification, the investment notes, the valuation work, these give me something concrete to point to. But I will not pretend the transition is easy. It requires you to start from the bottom of the learning curve in some ways, even when you have strong fundamentals elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do you see yourself going from here?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to work in a role where I am doing actual financial analysis and valuation work. Equity research, transaction advisory, something where the modeling and the sector research actually matter. I am not chasing a title. I just want to be in a room where people are doing serious analytical work on businesses and I can contribute to that.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CA background, the audit exposure, the capital markets experience at Motilal Oswal, and now the modeling training, I think it adds up to a profile that is a bit different from most people applying for analyst roles. Whether that is an advantage or not depends on the firm. But I am willing to put in the work to prove it out.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s Next<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Arihant’s story is really about compounding. The audit years gave him the accounting backbone, role at Motilal Oswal put him inside live capital market operations and The Wall Street School’s financial modeling program tied it all together. Each skill did not replace the last one, it stacked on top of it. That combination is what got him through the door as an analyst and it is what he is betting on next.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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