Notice: This is the virtual offering of the course for attendees who are unable to attend the in-person offering. The in-person course will be held September 23-25, 2025 in San Diego/La Jolla.  

This course is dedicated to new developments in the investments and derivatives world and the challenges for auditors that results. With all of the risk inherent in this highly complicated area, it is critical to stay on top of the new developments, new risks, new structures, new technology and new regulations. This class will cover all of the “news” that auditors should be concerned about. This is a class you can’t afford to miss if your continued or new responsibility is auditing the investment and derivative areas within your company.

Example Outline*:

*Note: Due to the nature of the course and given the uncertainty in the market, the current year year outline is under development. The prior year outline is included below as an example.

• Economic Overview: Review the key factors driving the economy its effect on capital markets and investments. Discussion will include topics such as:
  • Where are domestic and global economic indicators pointing?
  • What’s the Fed’s Next move? Where are interest rates heading?
  • Soft or Hard Landing? Monetary Policy Post-Mortem

• Investment and Derivative Case Studies: Examine recent failures, debacles and market events and analyze what went wrong, such as:
  • Was Archegos a ‘House of Cards’?: Bill Hwang is Found Guilty
  • How One of the World’s Oldest Hedge Funds Went Belly Up
  • Memes Stocks and Squeezes are Back: MMTLP, AMC, Nividia…
  • Citi’s Delta1 Desk’s $189 Billion Fat Finger
  • And more…

• Understanding Significant Risk Transfer Transactions (SRTs) – SRTs (sometimes referred to as credit risk transfers or CRTs) have attracted considerable attention recently, as many banks are looking for ways to optimize their capital structure. This segment explain what SRTs are and how these transactions can reduce risk-weighted assets (RWAs), helping banks to meet the more stringent regulatory capital requirements proposed as a result of the recent regional bank failures and the proposed Basel III Endgame regulations.

• Benchmarks: Best Practices and Bad Behavior – Benchmarking is used to measure the performance of a portfolio. Investment auditors are well aware that Portfolio Managers live and die by performance, which is measured relative to a benchmark; however, benchmarks are often overlooked in investment audits. This session will review how benchmarks are constructed and selected for asset classes and portfolios, as well as key controls in the benchmarking process.

• Modern Day Ponzi Schemes: Reviewing the Red Flags
  • A Jefferies Hedge Fund’s Portfolio Manager and a Water Ponzi Scheme
  • Harvard Business School Grad Swindles Fellow Alumni
  • ‘Cryptoqueen’ Makes FBI’s Ten Most-Wanted List for $4 billion Ponzi Scheme

• Crypto Catchup: Review the latest developments in crypto cases, common denominators and how such cases are shaping crypto regulation.
  • Crypto Rebounds – and FTX Finds the Money: Was SBF Right??
  • Binance Boss Heading to Prison – and Crypto’s Fight Against Market Manipulation
  • FTX-Linked Crypto Bank Silvergate Charged with Compliance Failures
  • The Regulatory Conundrum with Crypto

• Plus: Review and discuss market developments, regulatory initiatives, and reoccurring themes we’re seeing in investment and derivative audits, including:
  • Understanding Actual vs. Perceived Conflicts of Interests
  • Independent Investment Risk Oversight Function Leading Practices
  • Governance: Are Your Board Members Asking the Right Questions?
  • Roll-out of the Shortened Treasury Settlement and the State of Proposed Market Structure Reform Initiatives
  • The Return of the Syndicated Loan and What it Means for the Private Credit
  • SEC Private Fund Rule Vacated: What This Means for the Future of Private Fund Regulation

Course Outline

Course Information:

The course times will be 8:30 am – 4:30 pm Central Time on Day 1 and Day 2. The course end time on on Day 3 will be 12:00 pm Central Time.

For virtual courses, the virtual meeting link and course materials will sent 3-5 days before the course start date.

	Investment Training and Consulting Institute, Inc. is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credits. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its website: www.nasbaregistry.org.
Attendance Requirements:	In order to be awarded the full CPE hours, attendees must complete at least 3 attendance monitoring mechanisms (codewords, polls, etc) per CPE hour.
Policy Information:	For more information regarding how to register for a course, refund, program cancellation, complaint resolution policy and other frequently asked questions, please visit our Q&A page or contact our office at 785-783-8201.