The FAST modeling standard was pioneered by the founder of Financial Mechanics, John Richter, and Morten Siersted of F1F9 over 15 years ago and is now used by thousands of modelers across the globe as a ’shared language’ for modeling.
The Standard advocates a philosophy of good financial model design rules founded on the acronym FAST: flexible, accurate, structured, and transparent. It advocates transparent model structure and clear, crisp modeling style.
The Standard has been developed from the experience of industry practitioners who have learned simple techniques to replace overly-clever ‘good ideas’ that proved bad in practice over time. It documents a skilled craft that is functional within the realities of the business environment. As a minimum objective, models must be free of fundamental omissions and logical errors, and this outcome must be achieved under short lead times. However, a good model must achieve more than this minimum standard. It must be easily used and reviewed by others and readily adaptable as circumstances change.
The FAST Modeling Standard is now promoted through a non-profit organization, which you can follow at www.fast-standard.org or join us within the FAST Modeling Alliance on LinkedIn.