VCI Institute · CVCA Level 3 · Certified Value Creation Analyst
You are handed a value creation thesis and the corpus it was built from. Your task is not to agree with it or to disagree with it. It is to establish what is actually evidenced, what has merely been inferred, and what the distance between the two is worth.
499 US dollars. One payment. Seven day refund while the course is unused.
They are caught out by a number they never checked. It was plausible, it came from somewhere respectable, and by the time it reached the model nobody remembered it was an assumption.
This is the ladder you build in Module 2 and are still defending in Module 6.
Level 3 is about the distance between what a file appears to say and what it can be shown to say, and about holding a position once you have found it.
Analysts are rarely caught out by a number they got wrong. They are caught out by a number they never checked, carried forward because it was plausible and nobody asked where it came from.
By the end you will be able to grade any input on sight, price what you have assumed rather than established, and say which is which in a room where somebody senior would prefer you did not.
Both are built inside the case, then defended against challenge.
Instrument one
An A to E ladder that rates where a fact actually came from. A finding inherits the lowest grade of any input it depends on. There is no averaging, and a strong grade does not rescue a weak one sitting beside it.
Currency matters as much as grade. A high grade figure that is eighteen months stale is frequently the most dangerous input in a model, because nobody thinks to question it.
Instrument two
Every assumption carried without verification is logged in a five field register, including the date on which it was measured, and carried forward until it is either verified or written off.
It is priced by exposure, not by likelihood. An assumption that is probably right but would cost the fund a great deal if it were wrong is expensive debt, and the register says so.
Both instruments follow you out of the course. They are designed to be used on a live file the week after you finish.
The modules run in the order a real verification runs. You establish what is being asked, grade what you have, find what is missing, test the model against measurement, price what you inferred, and then defend it.
Module 1
What you have been asked is rarely what needs answering. Getting this wrong makes every subsequent hour of work irrelevant.
Module 2
Where the Evidence Grade ladder is built. An audited statement, a management deck and an email are not the same kind of fact.
Checkpoint
Modules 1 and 2, marked against the same standard as the certification examination so there are no surprises later.
Module 3
Absence is evidence. The figure a management pack omits is usually the one that would have changed the conclusion.
Module 4
A projection and an observation look identical in a spreadsheet cell. Treating one as the other is the most common failure in the discipline.
Module 5
The signature module. Where Inference Debt is built, and where the course publishes a correction to its own earlier reasoning as a worked example.
Module 6
Holding a graded position when somebody more senior disagrees, without either caving or overclaiming.
Three field artefacts and an optional library that converts into masterclass grants.
The grading sheets and register templates you used on the case, ready to run against a live mandate.
The questions that expose a weak input, and the wording to ask them with when the person answering outranks you.
One page. The grade ladder, the register fields and the currency test, compressed to what fits beside a laptop.
Optional. Value Creation Verified, Verification and the Machine, and Analytical Craft Applied. Each ends in a free masterclass grant.
Passing one does not carry the other.
Establishes that you can build a defensible position out of a real corpus and hold it when it is questioned.
It marks the grading of your inputs and the honesty of your register, not whether you reached a conclusion the marker happens to share.
Establishes that the instruments are yours rather than borrowed.
50 questions, drawn only from the six assessed modules. 90 minutes. The pass mark is 80 per cent, which is 40 of 50.
Built for
Probably not for you if
CVCA Levels 1 and 2. Level 3 assumes the analytical grounding they build and does not reteach it.
365 days from enrolment. There is no cohort and no fixed start date. You begin when you enrol.
Does not expire. No renewal fee and no continuing education requirement.
Seven days, while the course is unused. Starting any assessment ends the refund window.
No. What is marked is whether the position you reach is supported by the corpus, and whether you graded your inputs honestly along the way. Two analysts can reach different conclusions and both pass, provided each can show what their finding rests on.
CVCA Levels 1 and 2. Level 3 assumes the analytical grounding they build and does not reteach it.
No. Level 3 is asynchronous throughout. You start when you enrol and work at your own pace within the course access period.
No. It assumes you can already build the model. What it teaches is how to establish which of the inputs will survive being questioned, and what to do about the ones that will not.
Seven days from purchase, while the course is unused. The window closes as soon as you start any assessment. There is no minimum term, because there is nothing recurring to cancel.
Grade what you have. Price what you do not. Say which is which, out loud, to people who will push back.
499 US dollars. One payment. No subscription, no renewal fee.
