Wharton offers a comprehensive portfolio of executive development programs and designations specifically targeted to the needs of financial services professionals. Many of these programs have been developed through partnerships with today’s most influential industry associations.
Learn how financial services professionals who attend Wharton programs:
- Advance their financial leadership skills
- Lead in financial risk management
Advance your Financial leadership skills
Leadership that is based on the latest research and industry knowledge is more important than ever in the financial services sector. Wharton programs prepare senior executives to assess the industry’s constantly changing challenges, seize elusive opportunities, and manage their organization’s talent to do the same.
- Advanced Management Program — Wharton Executive Education’s flagship program, AMP, offers top-level finance executives an intensive and transformational five-week in-residence learning experience. Wharton faculty challenge and recalibrate participants’ work methods to ensure they apply research-based rigor and discipline, while class peers share best practices from their respective global vertical industries. Participants learn which managerial levers directly impact financial results and which metrics serve as the best proxy for value creation. Through small-group work, case study and class discussion, participants also examine the valuation of intangibles such as customers, brands, and human capital, and learn to communicate more effectively with non-finance professionals. The program explores the link between finance and strategy during times of market clarity and ambiguity, organic growth, and/or merger and acquisition. The program applies practical tools such as Discovery Driven Planning, Scenario Planning, and Real Options to prepare for the next market turn, and offers financial risk management strategies that enable the possibilities of the future while mitigating downside exposure.
- Securities Industry Institute® (SII) — First launched in 1952, the SII is Wharton’s largest and longest-running executive education program, led today by one of the most respected voices in finance, Wharton’s Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance, Jeremy Siegel. The intensive three-consecutive-year certificate program offered for one week each March equips professionals in the securities industry with information that is directly applicable to their current and future responsibilities in areas such as finance and strategy, technology and operations, legal and compliance issues, sales and marketing, and personal development and leadership.
- Strategic Persuasion Workshop: the Art and Science of Selling Ideas — Recent seismic shifts in the finance industry have triggered mergers and major reorganizations in the industry. This program provides finance professionals with strategies for removing obstacles to alignment, more effectively communicating their ideas, assembling winning coalitions, building credibility, increasing self-awareness, and negotiating win-win deals. The program is complementary to the book The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin), co-authored by the two academic directors, Wharton professor G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa, senior fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Care Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Leading and Managing People — This program offers financial services professionals the opportunity to challenge their assumptions about leadership and how they influence employees. Participants examine their management objectives and leadership style, and then experiment with new approaches and behaviors. Faculty and fellow executives provide constructive feedback and insights during applied learning sessions. Finance professionals who attend gain specific action steps for resolving current and future management challenge
- Critical Thinking: Real World, Real-Time Decisions — Making decisions in an atmosphere of market turmoil, increasing time pressure, and conflicting expert opinions creates challenges for any financial services professional. Critical Thinking focuses on reframing issues so that the right problems are addressed, distinguishing systematic patterns from random events and identifying acceptable risks in alternative decisions. This program examines the process of making better decisions within group or department settings, recognizing the more network-oriented and decentralized organizational structures of today's companies.
Financial Risk Management
- Risk Management Association (RMA)/Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program — Focusing on risk management as a key competitive strength, this first-of-its-kind advanced executive program on risk management explores the analytical framework for measuring, managing, and monitoring risk. Participants sharpen their approach to managing risk using models, tools, and strategies to better understand risk exposure, and learn to view their organization through an enterprise lens, focusing on culture, governance, and stakeholder relationships.
- FINRA Institute at Wharton Certificate Program — This three-year certificate program for high-potential executives provides a comprehensive grounding in the foundation, theory, and practical application of securities laws and regulation. Participants earn the 120 credits that are required for their Certified Regulatory and Compliance Professional™ (CRCP™) designation. The program combines the expertise of Wharton finance faculty with senior regulators and industry practitioners, and attracts participants from SEC, FINRA, other regulators, securities firms, and the legal profession.