YPE Featured Member: October 2016

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Chris Dumont, Associate Director, ATB Financial


Chris, as a ‘Young Professional in Energy’ tell us a bit about your day job in the energy sector?

I work at ATB Financial as an Associate Director specializing in oilfield service corporate lending with loans ranging between $10 million and $75 million, covering pretty much every subsector of the oilfield service space, such as: drilling, fracking, waste management and production testing. My day to day activities include interacting with the management teams of the various companies I deal with, underwriting credit, analyzing financial statements, forecasting and stress testing financial covenants, debt restructuring and attending networking events. Every day is different and in this environment it’s never boring that’s for sure!

We heard that you recently received your CFA, congratulations! Can you tell us a bit about that process?

Thank you! It was a long process having first passed the level I exam in June 2011. Looking back on it now the CFA program taught me the fundamentals of finance but more importantly it taught me hard work, perseverance and determination pays off. As for tips for anyone interested, I recommend starting in January for the June exam, that way you don’t have to cram and can balance your personal life with your professional and extracurricular commitments (although I have plenty of friends who swear by the cram method). Doing a lot of practice exams and practice problems I found is key and when the real exam is a few weeks away to sign up for a live mock exam to mimic the exam conditions.

How did you get involved with YPE? What keeps you coming back?

When I first moved to Calgary two years ago from Edmonton I was looking at various organizations to join to help expand my network and get involved in the community. YPE immediately stood out since I work in banking within the energy sector and it also catered to a young demographic which I found refreshing. I attended one of YPE’s speaker events and was immediately hooked. The great people you meet every event has kept me coming back with backgrounds ranging from banking to engineering to law and everything in between so every event is different. I also like the diversity of events, from socials to speaker series and their annual ski trip which I've heard is a ton of fun.

We are always looking for a new read, are you reading anything interesting currently?

I’m currently reading Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (author of the Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness). It’s about how adversity, uncertainty and stressors benefit every aspect of life from innovation, to health, to life decisions. I’m about 100 pages into it so far and while it’s a bit heavy I’d recommend it to anyone who has faced challenges in their life and overcame them to become better for it. Before that I read Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography by Walter Isaacson, which was a great read about one of America’s founding fathers, but my personal favourite this year has been Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari which was an exhilarating read covering 70,000 years of human history and how our history has shaped society to the present day.