The Basics

Course dates: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 – March 13, 2024

Places available: 12-15

Deadline for applications: Friday, December 15 2023

Where: Online via self-study interactive and animated modules (about 15-20 hours of learning) plus four live group Zoom seminars (of around 75 minutes each) with Finance Uncovered experts – and a written and marked assignment at the end.

Price: £500

How to apply: Please complete this form.

[If you have applied for a previous course or submitted enquiries to us before, please email us on this address to confirm you are still interested.]

Why you should do this course

Are you a journalist, campaigner or activist who needs a better understanding of how to use company financial statements to find and develop stories? Do you ever get stuck trying to find out who really controls a company?

Too many journalists have a confidence barrier when it comes to financial statements.

Our Understanding Company Accounts course is highly regarded and accredited by the Continuing Professional Development certification service.

Facilitated by Finance Uncovered expert journalists, Nick Mathiason, Ted Jeory, Warren Thompson, Malia Politzer and Simon Bowers, this is a course based on four structured online modules that will take you about 15 hours to complete over about 7 weeks.

You will get direct access to FU’s trainers and have the chance to bring your own case studies or target companies to the table to see if we can help develop stories.

This course is not just about numbers: You will become a better journalist, be more able to hold corporates and beneficial owners to account – and gain an edge over your peers.

What recent trainees told us:

In 11 years, we have trained over 1,250 journalists and activists from over 90 countries. Participants work for the BBC, Reuters, leading investigative centres and over 100 from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Campaigning organisations whose activists have taken our training include Transparency International, Global Witness and Oxfam.

Our new e-learning course has received superb feedback from participants. These are some of the comments left by the brilliant reporting team at Lighthouse Reports:

“I wanted a crash course that allowed me to have meaningful conversations with experts. This is exactly what it allowed me to do.”

I went into the course really insecure about my skills in anything financial/numerical, but both Nick and Ted were incredibly helpful and understanding from day one - going through any questions, providing great case studies that were really engaging. Also, it gave me confidence to go through the course without doubting myself and I was very happy with the outcome of the assignment!”

“It was a great introduction for a newbie like me and overall it made working with numbers way more interesting than I had ever thought. I moved from a journalist who hated accounting jargon, to one who could challenge myself to understand it. And that is all thanks to your course material and the guidance from course instructors.”

Course structure

Once you have signed up, we will send out usernames and passwords to log in to the modules on our Moodle learning platform one day before the course start date.

Provisionally...

Jan 24: We will have a group kick off meeting at 2pm London time on Zoom. We will welcome you and talk you through the course. You may at this point also suggest your own target companies that we may be able to help with.

Jan 31: Our first Zoom seminar to discuss and augment the learnings from Module 1 which you should complete by this date. We will set you a test during the call.

Feb 14: Our second Zoom seminar to discuss how you found Module 2, the chunkiest of the four modules which dives into the three main financial statements. We will set more tests for you during this seminar.

Feb 28: Our third Zoom seminar to discuss and test you on Module 3, which largely deals with the Notes to the Accounts. After this, you enter Module 4 and take our assignment.

Feb 26: Deadline for submitting your assignment.

March 13: Our final seminar to discuss how you got on and our feedback on your assignment.

Click here for fuller details about the course content.

Application process

Demand for this course will be high. We therefore ask you to complete this enquiry form (if you have not already done so) so we can help create a cohort that we think may work well together. Deadline: Thursday, December 14.

If you have applied for a previous course or submitted enquiries to us before, please email us on this address to confirm you are interested in this next course.

We will let you know by December 18 if you have a place and ask for confirmation you still want to go head. If so, we will issue invoices and T&Cs to sign. So that we can be fair to those on a waiting list, we will need full payment by January 10.

We will create a waiting list for those who are not selected on December 14.