Strategy& Italy — first technical round for Financial Services intern: what finance topics to master?

Hi there,

Great question—and it’s smart that you’re thinking ahead. I’ve worked in a Financial Services consulting practice, and I can share some guidance that should help you feel more prepared going into your Strategy& interview.

1. Finance Topics to Review

You don’t need to be an expert, but it’s important to show a solid understanding of how banks and financial institutions work. Focus on:

• The three basic financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement), and how they connect.
• Key metrics like return on equity, cost-to-income ratio, and loan default rates (often called non-performing loans). Here it’s especially important that you have a sense of what the case might be about and what insights these metrics provide you
• Key aspects of a bank’s business model - for instance impact of interest rates on loans and bank profitability or the role of financial regulation in Europe 
   

Valuation and investment analysis are less likely to come up at the intern level, but being familiar with concepts like these and understanding the key elements of a DCG (e.g., impact of cashflow timing on value) is useful. 

Note, in the end of the day your reasoning and analytical skills on the day are always more important than any technical knowledge. However, these topics might help you perform more confidently. 

2. What the Case Might Look Like

Since this is a Financial Services role, you could get a case that touches on banking, insurance, payments, or fintech. A few common themes:

• Estimating the size of a market (e.g., number of credit card users in Italy).
• Thinking about how a bank can grow its customer base or improve profitability.
• Understanding how costs or regulations might impact a business decision.

You won’t be expected to know exact numbers, but it helps to be familiar with basic industry patterns, like the fact that interchange fees in Europe are quite low, or that many Italian banks have reduced their branch networks in recent years. There is also still a possibility that you get a completely unrelated case so don’t be thrown off if this is the case.

3. Mental Math and Market Assumptions

It’s helpful to walk in with a few rough benchmarks in mind to avoid getting stuck during guesstimates:

• Italy has about 50 million adults.
• A large bank might have 1,000+ branches.
• Debit and credit card fees (what banks earn per transaction) are small—think fractions of a percent.
• Loan default rates have improved in recent years, now typically under 2% for major banks.

Hope this helps. Feel free to reach out if you’re keen to get some more specific pointers for FS-specific cases or if you would just like to get a better understanding of working in this space. 

Hi there,

Seems like you already have a good grip on what you can expect. 

You can find lots of the concepts you outlined explained super clearly online, so I assume this is not what you're looking for.

If you want a list of the most common formulas specifically for case interviews, you might find this useful:

• Cheatsheet: The Must-Know Consulting Terms for Interviews

Best,
Cristian

Hi there,

This guide from Clara is fantastic to refresh your core financial concepts before MBB interviews:

👉🏻 https://www.preplounge.com/en/shop/prep-guide/economic_and_financial_concepts_for_mbb_interviews

It’s concise, practical, and gives you exactly what you need.

Best,

Alberto