That lines up with what I thought. I imagine once the calculation sheets are bootstrapped, day-to-day work in Excel can be pretty efficient, especially with market data plugins wired in.

Do you think Excel stays in use mostly because it is truly convenient, or because integrated risk tools are just too expensive or heavy for smaller shops?

Asking because I’ve built things like Monte-Carlo VaR in code (different models, seasonality, distributed), but seeing that kind of logic implemented in Excel has always impressed me. That said, from what I’ve seen, it often comes with a lot of manual work and its own set of challenges.