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Early Warning Signs of Financial Distress and Business Stabilisation
Dates
Highlights
Live Online
3 CPD Units | 3 Hours
The EIMF Live Online Learning Experience
Participants will receive access to the recorded sessions of the course.
EIMF subject-matter experts deliver engaging and interactive courses across a broad spectrum of areas, that can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own chosen environment. Read more
Course Overview
Financial distress is rarely caused by one weak month or one missed payment. It usually develops through connected warning signs: deteriorating cash conversion, margin erosion, rising debt pressure, shrinking covenant headroom, customer dependency, supplier strain, weak forecasts, and delayed escalation.
This practical workshop enables participants to identify those signs early, assess their severity, challenge unsupported assumptions, and support timely first-stage stabilisation actions. It focuses on diagnosis, escalation, cash protection, stakeholder communication, and the first 30 days of recovery planning.
Training Objectives
By the end of the programme, participants will be able to:
Acknowledge how financial distress develops and how liquidity, viability, and fundability can deteriorate together.
Recognise the principal early-warning indicators across cash flow, working capital, margins, debt, covenants, customers, suppliers, forecasts, and governance.
Identify the purpose of short-term cash forecasting, covenant monitoring, stakeholder communication, and a first 30-day stabilisation plan.
Apply a five-lens framework to identify financial, commercial, and governance red flags.
Analyse cash-flow pressure, working-capital deterioration, margin decline, customer concentration, supplier dependency, and debt-servicing risk.
Challenge weak, incomplete, or overly optimistic assumptions in budgets, cash-flow forecasts, and covenant projections.
Prioritise risks by urgency, expected cash impact, reversibility, stakeholder impact, and severity.
Prepare an initial 30-day stabilisation plan with clear actions, owners, deadlines, controls, and escalation points.
Communicate material concerns objectively and constructively to management, directors, lenders, or other relevant stakeholders.
Develop a professional scepticism when reviewing management explanations, liquidity reporting, forecasts, and recovery assumptions.
Develop a proactive and responsible approach to escalating material concerns before financial pressure becomes a crisis.
Training Outline
Recognising Distress Before Crisis
Temporary underperformance versus liquidity stress, structural distress, and crisis.
Introduction to liquidity, viability, and fundability.
Facilitated diagnostic poll: identify warning signs commonly ignored in practice.
Cash, Liquidity and Working-Capital Triage
Operating cash flow versus profit
Cash burn
Liquidity runway
Rolling short-term cash forecasts
Debtor ageing; creditor pressure
Inventory build-up
Overdraft utilisation
Payroll, tax, debt, and essential supplier commitments.
Cash-flow triage exercise: identify immediate cash risks, forecast weaknesses, and priority information needs.
Margin, Customers, Suppliers and Commercial Viability
Gross and contribution margin
Cost inflation
Discounting
Loss-making customers or contracts
Break-even pressure
Customer concentration
Cancellations
Disputed invoices
Supplier dependency
Tightening credit terms.
Commercial-risk review: distinguish symptoms from root causes and identify reversible versus structural issues.
Funding, Covenants, Forecast Credibility and Governance
Debt-service pressure
Refinancing risk
Covenant headroom
Downside sensitivity
Lender-reporting obligations
Forecast variance
Optimism bias
Delayed reporting
Board visibility
Management accountability.
Forecast and covenant challenge: identify assumptions requiring evidence, correction, or escalation.
Integrated Financial-Distress Case Study
Participants receive a fictional business case showing weak margins, rising debtor days, supplier pressure, overdraft use, covenant risk, customer dependency, and unrealistic forecasting.
Group output: five-lens red/amber/green risk map and prioritised diagnosis.
First 30-Day Stabilisation Plan
Cash protection
Collections
Expenditure control
Supplier engagement
Contract and customer-profitability review
Funding engagement
Management reporting
Governance rhythm
Ownership and milestones.
Planning workshop: prepare a stabilisation plan with actions, owners, deadlines, expected cash impact, dependencies, and escalation points.
Escalation, Stakeholders and the Audit/Governance Lens
Escalating concerns to management and boards
Communicating with lenders, suppliers, customers, employees, and shareholders
Forecast evidence
Management bias
Going-concern indicators
Documentation and authority limits.
Stakeholder communication exercise: prepare a concise, evidence-based escalation recommendation.
Case Debrief and Implementation Commitment
Review the distress cycle, priority actions, and common judgement errors.
Individual action commitment for the participant’s organisation, finance function, audit portfolio, or client base.
Who Should Attend
This course is designed for professionals with responsibility for financial oversight, liquidity, forecasting, risk, governance, commercial performance, or business resilience, including:
CFOs, finance directors, finance managers, and financial controllers.
Accountants, management accountants, FP&A professionals, and treasury professionals.
External auditors, internal auditors, assurance professionals, and business advisers.
Risk, governance, compliance, and business-resilience professionals.
Credit-control and working-capital professionals.
Business owners, directors, and senior managers with financial accountability.
Consultants supporting SMEs, owner-managed businesses, and mid-sized organisations.
The course is relevant across trading, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, professional services, technology, financial services, and project-based businesses.
Recommended prior knowledge: Participants should be comfortable reading basic management accounts, cash-flow forecasts, and key business-performance information. No restructuring or insolvency experience is required.
Training Style
The programme is designed to equip participants with practical knowledge and strengthen their professional capabilities through a highly interactive and application-focused learning approach. Delivery combines short, targeted lectures with case studies, practical examples, facilitated discussions, and realistic workplace simulations.
Through structured discussion, peer exchange, and facilitator feedback, participants will apply the concepts, tools, and techniques introduced throughout the programme while strengthening their analytical thinking, problem-solving, professional judgement, and decision-making skills. By the end of the programme, they will be better equipped to respond confidently and effectively to comparable workplace challenges.
CPD Recognition
This programme may be approved for up to 3 CPD units in Accounting and Auditing. Eligibility criteria and CPD Units are verified directly by your association, regulator or other bodies which you hold membership.
In-house Training
For groups within the same organisation, this course may be customized to meet any specific needs and delivered in-house.
Facilitators
Marios Mortis
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Marios Mortis holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration with a focus on Accounting, as well as a Master's degree in Banking and Finance. He is a qualified member of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA). Marios has accumulated valuable experience working in various positions and companies within Cyprus's accounting, audit, advisory, assurance, and banking sectors. In the past seven years, Marios has embarked on a new and fulfilling career path in the field of education, which he finds both challenging and fascinating. He served as a Visitor Academic at a local university in Cyprus, where he taught several courses, including corporate governance and business ethics, corporate finance, corporate risk management, and audit and assurance. Currently, Marios holds the position of Trainer and Accountancy Programmes Leader at EIMF (European Institute of Management and Finance). In this role, he oversees the management of both professional and academic accounting and finance programmes. Marios has successfully designed and delivered professional training courses covering topics such as corporate reporting, tax, AML (Anti-Money Laundering), funds, forensic accounting, financial analysis, auditing, and financial workshops. Furthermore, Marios is entrusted with leading the Department of Accounting & Finance within EIMF's Academic School. He actively engages in research within the domains of finance and accounting, contributing to both academic and professional endeavors in these fields.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will I receive my invoice?
The invoice is issued on the day the course starts.
What payment methods are accepted?
Payments can be made by bank transfer, cheque, or credit card.
When will my certificate be issued?
Certificates are issued within 7–10 days after the course has been completed, provided that the invoice has been paid.
How can I access my certificate?
Once your certificate has been issued, you will receive an automated email from Cademy notifying you that it is available.
Click the Get Your Certificate button in the email to download your certificate.
You can also access it from your Cademy account:
- Log in to your Cademy account from https://cademy.io
- Click on My Account from the top-right corner.
- From the drop-down menu select My Courses and Bookings.
- Choose the relevant course.
- Under Participants, click the three dots located next to your name.
- Select Get Certificate.
Where can I access the course material?
To access the course materials, such as presentations and recordings:
- Log in to your Cademy account from https://cademy.io
- Click on My Account from the top-right corner.
- From the drop-down menu select My Courses and Bookings.
- Choose the relevant course.
- Under Extra Details, you will find all the available course materials.