In the legal industry it is common practice for professionals to perform work ‘pro bono’ to support certain organisations or people in need. I don’t know how this practice started and what is keeping it going, but reflecting upon it the lack of pro bono services in the financial modelling community is quite obvious.
Why do lawyers work for free when financial modellers don’t?
The closest a financial modeler comes to pro-bono work is a success fee-based fee structure payable only upon successful completion of a project. It’s not quite the same thing as providing free advice to a person or organisation with no capacity to pay for their services today AND in the future.
I suppose that one reason the lack of pro-bono services for financial modellers is that these services are not really required on an individual level. Most people’s personal cashflows don’t require investment banking level of analysis to understand sensitivities or scenarios. If they do, you probably have bigger problems than just modelling your situation… (This article ‘pro bono financial management’ highlights similar thoughts)
Who would need pro bono financial modelling?
In my view pro bono financial modelling could apply to a number of projects, mainly in emerging markets social infrastructure or energy projects. In many cases it would be enough to find a suitable template to be used for the analysis. In a way I suppose some banks already do this by providing financial modelling ‘for free’ on the assumption that they will recover the costs through the financing fees at a later stage….
I suppose writing this without backing it up would be rather pointless, so here we go…. If you could argue that you are trying to build a better world with no purpose of getting rich in the process and see the need for financial modelling - let me know and I will help you out - pro bono!
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