Starting out in valuation: a map of the territory

Valuation has a habit of looking bigger from the outside than it does once you have a map. The discipline spans businesses, buildings, brands, financial instruments and infrastructure; it borrows from finance, economics, law and statistics; and it is practised in almost every market in the world. If you are a student or in the first years of your career, the most useful early move is not to memorise techniques — it is to understand how the territory is organised. The International Valuation Standards (IVS) are that map.

The General Standards: how every valuation is built

The General Standards apply to every valuation, whatever the asset. There are seven: IVS 100 Valuation Framework, IVS 101 Scope of Work, IVS 102 Bases of Value, IVS 103 Valuation Approaches, IVS 104 Data and Inputs, IVS 105 Valuation Models and IVS 106 Documentation and Reporting.

Read in sequence, they mirror the life of a real engagement: agree what you are being asked to do, define what kind of value you are measuring, choose how to measure it, gather and test the data, apply the models, and then write it all up so someone else can follow your reasoning. That last step matters more than newcomers expect — a valuation that cannot be explained is not finished. The full standards are available as a free PDF via registration, which makes them one of the more accessible professional texts to start with.

The Asset Standards: where you might specialise

The Asset Standards add requirements for particular asset types: IVS 200 Businesses and Business Interests, IVS 210 Intangible Assets, IVS 220 Non-Financial Liabilities, IVS 230 Inventory, IVS 300 Plant, Equipment and Infrastructure, IVS 400 Real Property Interests, IVS 410 Development Property and IVS 500 Financial Instruments.

Each of these is a career in itself, and most people eventually concentrate on one or two. You do not need to choose yet. The General Standards apply across all of them — which is why they are worth learning first, and why moving between specialisms later is more feasible than it looks.

A genuinely global profession

One reason to learn IVS early is simple reach. IVS is used as a framework in more than 100 countries, and the IVSC’s more than 170 member organisations — professional bodies, institutional, corporate and academic members — operate across 137 countries.

In practical terms: the standards you study now are a language much of the profession already speaks. Whether your first role is in audit support, a valuation team, a property practice or a fund, the vocabulary of scope of work, bases of value and valuation approaches will be recognised wherever you work.

Where study meets standard-setting

Standards are written, consulted on and revised — and the academic world has a formal seat in that process. The IVSC Academic Forum, established in 2025 and co-chaired by Professor Mauro Bini of Bocconi University and Dr Frank Harrington of TU Dublin, meets quarterly and connects academics working in valuation education and research with the development of IVS. It promotes research on themes such as ESG, technology and data.

If you are still studying, that is worth noticing for two reasons. First, dissertation topics that engage with the standards connect your work to questions practitioners genuinely face. Second, it is a reminder that IVS is not a fixed rulebook to be memorised but a living framework — one your generation will help revise.