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Best Excel Add-ins for Investment Banking Analysts
If you are an Investment Banking Analyst, Excel isn’t software—it’s an extension of your body.
You live in it. You dream in INDEX(MATCH).
But vanilla Excel isn’t enough. To survive the 100-hour weeks, you need Add-ins. These are the force multipliers that turn a 2-hour task into a 5-minute one.
1. o11 (The AI Analyst)
Best For: Automating modeling and data entry. The Feature: Generative Modeling. Instead of typing formulas, you highlight a range and say: “Build a Revenue build-up based on Price x Volume assumptions.” o11 writes the logic and links the cells.
2. Macabacus (The Formatting King)
Best For: Formatting and auditing. The Feature: “Cycle Coloring.” Press a shortcut to instantly cycle a cell’s font color between Blue (Input), Black (Formula), and Green (Link). It ensures your models are audit-ready.
3. Capital IQ / FactSet (The Data Streams)
Best For: Pulling public company data. The Feature: CIQ formulas. Pulling historical financials directly into your spread. Essential, but often clunky. (Pro Tip: Use o11 to “spread” this data more intelligently if the plugin breaks).
4. Arixcel (The Auditor)
Best For: Formula tracing. The Feature: It visualizes formula dependencies much better than native Excel. Great for debugging a broken model at 2 AM.
5. BamSEC (Now AlphaSense)
Best For: Tying numbers to filings. The Feature: One-click to grab a table from a 10-K and drop it into Excel with a link back to the source.
How to Choose?
You likely need a combination:
- Macabacus for making it look pretty.
- Capital IQ for getting the raw data.
- o11 to actually build the analysis and connect it to PowerPoint.
The best analysts don’t just work hard; they have the best toolkit.
