What Skills Should Financial Analysts Have?
Financial analysts might specialize in investment banking, equity, treasury, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), or corporate development. This specialization will determine the types of data and predictions they’ll work with as well as the environment they’ll work in. While most Financial Analysts work in an office setting, some work remotely from home.
A Financial Analyst must have a complete understanding of industry jargon from YoY and ROE, to ROA and EPS. Financial Literacy is key in this position. They’ll use databases, statistics, historical reports to make regression analyses, reports, and presentations. This means proficiency in Hyperion, SAP, SQL, and Quickbooks is usually required by employers. Most companies use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software like Netsuite, SAP, or Sage and a Financial Analyst must become proficient in at least one of these systems.
Financial Analysts will be communicating with c-level leadership often which will require some soft skills. This includes strong communication, problem-solving, interpersonal skills, financial literacy, and the ability to take direction. The Financial Analyst will likely be conducting presentations in front of a full table of executives, public speaking skills will likely be required whether they’re explicitly included in a job description or not.
Learn the Skills You Need to Become a Financial Analyst
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Excel
Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft that runs on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It is used for calculation, graphing, data visualization, and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro programming.
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Financial Modeling
Financial modeling is the use of a tool built into Excel to forecast the future financial performance of a business. These predictions are based on the historical performance of a company, and inferences of the future.
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Finance
Finance involves the management, study, and creation of money and investments. Finance dictates how a company, individual, or governing power acquires necessary capital. Finance typical uses tools like Quickbooks, Oracle, and Excel.
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Accounting
Accounting involves processing, measuring, and communicating financial information about businesses. Accounting often uses software like QuickBooks, Excel, and other office communication tools.
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Investing
Investing is allocating money with the expectation of a future benefit. Benefits accrued through investment are called returns.
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FinTech
FinTech stands for Financial Technology. FinTech is the technology or computer programs that are used to support, improve, enable, and automate banking and financial services.