Over 40 thousand customers filled our utility finance and accounting seminars in the last four decades.
Now, our seminar “conference room” is growing… to infinity. FAI’s seminars will be self-paced courses: same instructor, same curriculum, enhanced with new learning modes and modules. On your schedule.
A Logical Shift
Most of our attendees took our seminars in corporate conference rooms. Some took them at hotels, often in Las Vegas. While participants no longer get a “free trip to Vegas,” it is a big benefit to take our courses on your time, wherever. Feel free to fly to Vegas, or Paris!… especially if you can convince the training department to pay for it!
The reason FAI focused on utility finance and accounting all these years is that the topic is genuinely distinct. Regulated ratemaking, AFUDC, regulatory assets and liabilities — none of that sits inside a standard CPA or MBA curriculum. Accounting is central to how the businesses of investor owned utilities work. That’s why our instructor, Joel Berk, and Linda Ross co-founded FAI. That educational need still exists.
The calendar often constrained access to our seminars. Joel could only teach in one conference room at a time!
New Format, Same Training
Modern tools, especially a top-tier self-paced learning platform, solve FAI’s calendar problem. FAI will continue to teach utility finance and accounting… in a new format. Concretely:
- Same instructor. Joel is at the core of the course.
- Same curriculum. Enhanced with new content and context. Broken into digestible chunks.
- Learning is bolstered by interactive features like quizzes to reinforce what is learned.
- Start on your schedule; finish at your own pace.
Kevin Takes the Lead
Another reason this shift is happening is that Joel is retiring from live teaching. He’s been on a plane every other week since the Reagan administration, teaching all over North America (and once in Russia!). Joel’s son, Kevin, is taking the reins. Kevin has been involved in FAI in nearly every capacity for 30+ years. Joel will keep contributing and advising, particularly on curriculum.
Joel has been a phenomenal teacher and has been fully committed to FAI. There were often annual reports strewn on the dining table and Kevin stuffed envelopes for prospective participant mailings… in middle school (yes, he was paid)! Importantly, he taught Kevin the core tenet of FAI: participants need to learn the material. Joel achieved that better than anyone — he made the material accessible, interesting, and dare we say, entertaining.
New in 2026
- New website and blog at: financialaccounting.com
- LinkedIn – stay connected with FAI and updated on the industry
- Webinar for non-financial professionals opens this summer
- Webinar for financial professionals follows in early Q4
Expect to hear from us more regularly: email, LinkedIn, and the blog. We’ve been quiet, but we were planning and building.
PS — if you have colleagues who’d want a heads-up about our self-paced format, please forward this. Word of mouth referrals are how all those conference rooms were filled in the first place.
— Joel and Kevin