20 Free Online Finance Courses For Beginners

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Free financial courses help boost your financial knowledge and skills without breaking the bank. You will find it across different e-learning platforms.

From the basics of capital budgeting to investment strategies for effective decision-making, you can learn everything related to finance at your own flexible pace online. You can be a student, professional, or an individual looking to be more money-savvy, these free courses help you provide valuable insights, making you aware of informed financial decisions.


1. International Finance

  • Offered by: Marginal Regional University
  • Duration: 6 hours

This free course covers some of the most complex but crucial topics related to economics and finance. You will learn about how the exchange rates are determined, when if ever are ongoing trade deficits harmful, and what are the roots of the euro crisis and what resolution can we expect.

The interesting thing about international finance is that even most professional economists don't understand it properly unless they have specialized in this subject. You will also learn about the balance of payments, purchasing power parity, international trade overview, and the currency issues in the market.

2. Introduction To Corporate Finance

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  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 3 hours

The corporate finance course is taught hands-on by the experts where you will learn about the nature of Corporate finance decisions, agency problems, and more as a beginner.

Throughout this course, learners will gain a deeper understanding of financial concepts and principles, including financial statement analysis, investment decisions, capital budgeting, and more. You will also learn the essentials of corporate finance including financial planning, management, and accounting.

3. Financial Markets by Yale

  • Offered by: Coursera
  • Duration: 33 hours ( flexible schedule)

This course is divided into 7 modules with an overview of ideas, methods, and institutions that manage risk and foster enterprises, financially savvy leadership skills, a description of practices today, and an analysis for the future. 

You will also know about risk management and behavioral finance principles to understand the real-world functioning of securities, insurance, and banking industries. The ultimate goal of this course is to use such industries effectively to better society. 

4. Business Finance Foundations

  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 2.5 hours

This course begins with an overview of business finance. The online finance course will help to introduce the learners to different accounting and business finance concepts.

It provides real-world examples to the learners from real financial statements from the companies so that it remains practical learning for the students. You will also get access to reference materials to understand better the financial statements such as balance sheets, cash flow statements, and profit and loss statements. You should join the quiz after completing every module in this course to check your learning capability.

5. Introduction To Financial Management

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  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1 hour

This online financial management course will help you understand the basic concept of financial management and its broader areas, through the concepts of the financial module. 

You will understand the critical responsibilities that a financial manager should be aware of to aid in effective financial management as a finance manager. You will also understand the principle agent relationship, financial market, and financial instruments, and will go through business security for investments and equity financing along with pros and cons.

6. Financial Accounting

  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1 hour

This course begins with a short explanation of financial accounting and will discuss the most critical reports in financial accounting. It also provides practical knowledge of financial instruments like balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.

You will get to analyze the samples of each of the statements for more comprehensive learning. The course then proceeds with the financial ratio concepts, what they do, and the key ratios in analyzing the financial statements. This beginner-level course will provide full career support with the knowledge of financial reports analysis.

7. Fundamentals Of Finance

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  • Offered by: Udemy
  • Duration: 35 minutes

This course is the perfect instruction for all things finance where students will learn about investing with starting a business. In this course, you will learn about the basic definition of finance, its multiple aspects, and the key players in the financial markets.

This course provides a better understanding of finance and the ability to navigate finance-related discussions. It is suited for those looking to advance their learning of finance effectively. You will deeply dive into these aspects and pick them apart, progression your understanding as you move along.

8. Analytics In Finance

  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1 hour

The course is ideal for enthusiasts in analytics, trying to enhance their analytical skills and knowledge. The course provides you with the basic concepts of analytics in finance, general analytics, and its constitutions. 

You will also learn about the analytics in several types of banking, such as retail, commercial, and investment banking. As financial analytics is crucial for businesses, this free course will help you know the functioning of different banking sectors and will understand how it helps these businesses solve their major problems and improve their outcomes.

9. Fundamentals of Business Finance

  • Offered by: Goldman Sachs via Coursera
  • Duration: 4 hours

This free course is one of the 10 courses in Golden Sachs designed for entrepreneurs ready to take their businesses to the next level. It will introduce you to business finance, and show how to use financial statements to understand and monitor the company's financial situation to make business decisions. 

You will check the income statement and balance sheet and analyze those statements to calculate the financial ratios such as net profit margin and current ratio of your current business performance of the company. Also, you will have a basic idea of the building blocks of financial statements, including Assets, liabilities, equity, revenue, and expenses.

10. Capital Budgeting Techniques

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  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1 hour

In this course, you will look into the four major capital budgeting techniques in finance such as PBP, NPV, IRR, and Break Even Analysis, and understand the capital structure and the capital structural decisions.

You will get hands-on experience with real-world data, where you learn how to calculate the payback period, net present value, and Internal rate of return before making any business decisions regarding the company. Knowledge of capital budgeting techniques will help you to make effective decisions by analyzing its value and the internal rate of return it provides upon investment.

11. Asset Management

  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1.5 hours

Asset management is a way of managing various assets in an organization and a medium to learn change management. You will see tangible and intangible assets identified and classified, including capital, property, buildings, data, and loyalty.

This course will help you understand what asset management is all about, the need to learn asset management, different tasks, its types, and challenges in asset management. It will be helpful to you if you know which assets are profitable to multiply your wealth and which should be duly avoided.

12. Behavioral Finance

  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1.5 hours

The course will help you explore the depths of the fascinating world of behavioral finance. You can dive into its core theories and fundamental building blocks shaping market dynamics. You will also learn about the common behavioral finance biases in this course.

You will be able to refine your decision-making ability with practical strategies for real-world scenarios and get a nuanced understanding of key terminologies used to comprehend behavioral finance. It further engages in critical analysis by exploring the issues of prevalent theories, fostering a comprehensive viewpoint.

13. Basics Of Financial Terminology ( Fintech)

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  • Offered by: Alison
  • Duration: 1.5-3 hours

Financial technology uses digital technology to deliver financial services such as making payments and obtaining financial clients through mobile and laptops.

You will understand how open banking and application programming interfaces facilitate the growth of fintech and the impact of innovations such as blockchain, AI, and ML. You will also know about the features and benefits of decentralized finance and its current and potential risks before handling them. This course also helps you learn about the fintech ecosystem, including demand and supply factors.

14. Mastering Financial Statement Analysis

  • Offered by: Alison
  • Duration: 2-3 hours

This free finance course defines various terminologies used in business, including current and noncurrent assets. You will learn to find the debt and liabilities section, profit and losses in the income statement, and use inventory costs methods like FIFO and LIFO. 

You will learn about existing assets such as cash, inventory, bank accounts, and ‘accounts receivable’ and noncurrent assets like land, buildings, and equipment. It will also help you to recognize the typical sections of income statements and how the nature of business affects the presentation of income statements. 

15. Working Capital Management

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  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1 hour

This transformative course on Working capital management begins with an introduction to working capital, setting the stage for an in-depth dive into financial entities. You will learn to uncover the meaning and definition of working capital management, grasping its crucial role in strategic financial planning. 

You will also analyze the various working capital requirements types for strategic decision-making and navigate the operating cycle, a crucial aspect of financial dynamics. This course further teaches you the objectives and the importance of working capital management for steering a business to success with effective strategic planning. 

16. Personal Budgeting Using Microsoft Excel

  • Offered by: Great Learning
  • Duration: 1.5 hours

This course covers the much-needed topics, starting with an introduction to budgeting and its significance in managing your finances effectively. You will also enter the world of savings and investments, and how to make choices to secure your financial future. 

From traditional to zero-based budgets, you will have a comprehensive knowledge of how to tailor your budget to your unique circumstances with the tools to take charge of your finances. It will help you explore several financial goals by setting toward achieving your dream, whether it's buying a home, education, or planning for retirement.

17. Python And Statistics For Financial Analysis

  • Offered by: Coursera
  • Duration: 12 hours

Python is considered the number one programming language for data science. Due to its simplicity and high readability, it is gaining importance also in the financial industry. This course combines Python coding and statistical concepts to analyze financial data such as stock data. 

You can import, pre-process, save, and visualize the financial data into a pandas data frame with the help of Python. You will also apply crucial statistical concepts such as random variables, frequency, distribution, and linear regression into financial contexts. It will help you build a trading model using a multiple linear regression model.

18. Business and Financial Modeling Specialization

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  • Offered by: Coursera
  • Duration: 1 month at 10 hours a week

This course is designed to help you make known about making business and financial decisions. These foundational courses will introduce you to spreadsheet models, modeling techniques, and common applications for investment analysis, company valuation, and forecasting.

You will be ready to use your data to describe the realities, build scenarios, and forecast performance after completing this specialization course. Also, you will know about the fundamentals of quantitative modeling, modeling risk and realities, decision-making and scenarios, and predicting performance.

19. Accounts Receivable Management

  • Offered by: Alison
  • Duration: 1.5-3 hours

This business administration course provides all the necessary information to adopt the best accounting practices to ensure effective debt collections. It draws on understanding the accounting principles to help you understand the accounts receivable and the importance of its management.

It further explains how to establish credit policies and emphasizes the necessity of continuous credit evaluation, credit assessment, and risk analysis. You will also learn the importance of collecting payments from customers who owe money for goods and services, cash application, and reconciliation, and how to automate them to improve accuracy.

20. Fundamentals Of Credit Control

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  • Offered by: Alison
  • Duration: 1.5-3 hours

This course helps you explore the essential processes and strategies to efficiently manage credit, improve your credit score, and enhance your business performance. This course is for financial professionals, credit managers, and anyone managing credit risks and debt collections.

It will further provide easy tools and techniques for credit management, including effective communication, dynamics of debt control, and credit control software. You will learn about the fundamental strategies and how to identify common risks associated with lending and tools to reduce the risks. You will also learn to evaluate and enhance credit control management, including professional communication and software.

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