Learning by doing, not by watching
Finsimco delivers simulation based training and simulation based learning in finance and professional services. Participants step into realistic workplace scenarios, make decisions under pressure, and receive feedback based on what they actually do.
Our programs typically cut time-to-productivity by around 40%, with role-readiness reached in roughly 30 days rather than the usual three months.
Ways to use simulation based learning
Finsimco's simulation based learning works as two connected programs, built on the same engine and tailored to a different outcome.
Use New Hire Onboarding for graduates, interns, and new analysts. Role-specific simulations put new hires through the real work - the tasks, the sequence, the decisions, and the pressure of the role they are joining - so they arrive productive rather than spending months learning on the job. This is where simulation based learning has the greatest impact, because early-career hires have the steepest curve to climb.
Use Talent Development to build ongoing capability across employees. Difficulty adapts to each participant - stretching strong performers, supporting others - and produces per-participant skill signals managers can use for development conversations.
Why game-based learning drives real engagement
Game-based learning works because it changes behaviour before the session even begins. In our experience, the moment learners know a competitive simulation is coming, they start preparing - something traditional training almost never achieves. They arrive engaged, take the work seriously because performance is measured against their peers, and stay absorbed because the experience has stakes.
Competition is central to this. Learners compete and can see how they rank, which drives urgency and effort. Crucially, poor performers are never publicly exposed - results that could embarrass an individual stay private, so the competition energises rather than humiliates. This balance, competitive enough to engage but safe enough to protect people, is what keeps engagement high across an entire cohort, not just the top of it.
The programs build both technical capability and the softer skills that determine who actually performs: critical thinking, communication, collaboration under pressure and the judgment to prioritise when everything cannot be done at once.
Synchronous, team based learning works best
Finsimco simulations can run asynchronously, with participants learning in their own time, or synchronously, with people interacting live. Many organisations start with asynchronous delivery for the flexibility, and it works well for foundational skills.
But the strongest learning happens synchronously, in teams. When people work through a scenario together in real time - negotiating, dividing the work, reacting to events as they unfold - they practise exactly the dynamics that define real professional work. Multiplayer, team-based delivery turns a training exercise into a rehearsal for the job and it is consistently where we see the deepest engagement and the strongest skill transfer.
Built by practitioners, calibrated across hundreds of cohorts
Finsimco's simulations are built by people who did the work - former Morgan Stanley bankers alongside finance academics and specialists from private equity, venture capital, and advisory. The realism is not production polish; it is domain accuracy, which is what allows the practice to transfer to live work.
Every program is grounded in established learning science - experiential learning, deliberate practice, and spaced repetition at rising difficulty - and refined through a calibration process run across hundreds of cohorts. The methodology that underpins our training is set out in detail on our Learning Science page.