Job Description

  Financial Analyst/Treasurer

A financial analyst in business banks is responsible for the overall financial health of the bank. An analyst will develop a strong knowledge of lending, banking product, and investment areas and business strategy over time. Although not client facing, this role provides a strong support for the whole bank as it monitors, regulates, and addresses different situations of various departments and branches.

Sounds very complex and not that fun, right? Yes, I 100% agree with you. My summer interned at a business bank’s finance department is no fuss, straight forward, and very analytic and math centric. But having a lot of fun is not my mentality prepared for this work, I looked forward to getting known the financial mechanism of a bank and sharping my skills. However, the internship turned out to be so much more entertaining than I thought, and let me tell you why.

As a supportive role, the analyst’s ability to manage priorities while working on a number of high priority opportunities simultaneously is essential.  An analyst will also exchange ideas and opinions with others to evaluate concerns and risks in a team environment.

Cash Management

A big part of the job is cash management, which takes care the daily includes deposits, lending, account payables/receivables, and trade:

·      Retrieving and reviewing daily overdraft reports and Automatic Clearing House exceptions

·      Making recommendations on appropriate disposition of overdrafts

·      Monitoring closely on Loan and Account Summary and update to the online data base

Reporting and Documentation:

Making sure it stays in the regulation is very important for a commercial bank. An analyst needs to prepare required internal documentation and external compliance based on the bank’s size and business area:

·      Underwriting investment on investments such as account receivables and municipal bonds

·      Preparing credit amendments and other necessary documents needed for ACH Control Limit Report

·      Analyzing financial statements and evaluating historical operating performance and financial conditions

·      Producing monthly, quarterly, annually financial reports regarding trends, variances, profitability and performance measurement

Budget Planning

Here, the analyst provides an analytic approach to the future. The plan determines where a bank wants to go and how it will get there by accurately predicting the spending and earning:

·      Understanding the data relations and interdependencies in financial applications

·      Consulting departments and branches their annual targets and spending needs

·      Inputting the results into budgeting model and adjusting accordingly to the bank’s overall targets and needs

Deal Management

This is not very common in the industry, but can often happen when the bank has a need of expanding through acquisition or liquidizing through selling assets:

·      Researching on potential targets/candidates through multiple criteria

·      Developing investment recommendation

·      Presenting the idea by walking through the process and explain decision making

·      Modeling out the pricing range

·      Conducting sensitivity test on purchasing method

Lucky enough, I focused most of my time on this part. As the bank I interned at just went IPO(initial public offerings) and in urgent need of expanding, the CFO asked me to do research on potential acquisition targets. I did research based on geography, demography, financials, and management teams and filtered out 15 banks that can be acquired. Following that, I conducted different valuation models to provide CFO an approx. value range. At the end of the summer, I present my research to CFO and attended the meeting with investment bankers to exchange my idea on the potential acquisitions.  

I experience is that this position will provide me a wide range of complex analytical/presentation support to the Corporate Banking group. It will also entail me utilization of analytical and modeling skills to provide consistent data and reporting support as part of a team of analysts to deliver a high-quality work product. Some small pieces are through many routine tasks, I learned how to develop, manage, and maintain financial models, comparable company and transaction databases as well presentation materials.

Grammar Stats:
Readability
Flesch Reading Ease: 63.5
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.2
Passive Sentences: 0.0%