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Essential Finance/banking knowledge a business analyst should


possess for a BA job in finance domain,

A business analyst is involved in the preparation of the requirement


documentation, analysis of the functional issues, supporting the project team
throughout the project life cycle and successful delivery to the client. The basic
skills which a business analyst aspiring for a BA job in the finance domain should
have are:

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a) Functional knowledge – the finance domain as such is huge and has


immense potential for the right candidate to grow. There are several subsets of
the finance industry wherein you can be in the banking industry, financial
services or the finance or accounts department of a user company. Wherever be
the financial job role be, the functional knowledge required is broadly the same.
The requirements include the basic knowledge of financial accounting and
management, understanding of the primary KPIs(Key Performance Indicators) if
required, basic knowledge of the operations in the front and the back offices of
the financial organization.

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b) Management Skills – A prospective business analyst in the financial


domain should have be proficient and experienced in people management, good
communication and leadership skills, excellence in project and change
management. As a business analyst is a conduit between the users and the
technical team, its vital that the BA has professional experience in handling such
project teams and resources

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c)Technical skills – Right from being brilliant in MS – Office tools such as


Word, Excel, Access, Visio to being hands-on in the programming languages. A
business analyst should be up to date in the latest technology trends and the
software packages launched recently, so as to be capable of providing a viable and
innovative solution.

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d) Educational background – if the prospective business analyst candidate


is from a management educational background or has had a finance related
education.

In case of a financial industry like the banking domain, there are


several types of banking like retail, corporate, investment etc . The business
processes of each of these industries are somewhat different and the business
applications and other technology tools being used are also varied. We can
discuss in the detail the knowhow required for the various categories here:

a) Retail Banking:basic know how required are the financial operations,


payments and trade transactions, AML(Anti Money laundering), Fraud
management
b) Investment Banking: functional experience in FX(Foreign Exchange)
processes either Options or Cash, Front and back office operations, Hedge Funds
and derivatives, Asset management, Risk management

c) Private Banking/Wealth Management : expertise in treasury or cash


products, traded instruments, vendor management, regulatory requirements,
related applications based on technologies or tools such as SWIFT, Basel II

So, in case financial organizations are interested in a business analyst to join


their ranks, they will prefer that the business analyst will come to them with
minimum of few years in a similar industry and preferably from a business
analyst background. If so then, the business analyst can bring with him the
perfect mix of technical know-how and domain knowledge specific to that
industry.

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Sample Resume for Financial and Banking Domain:

Name:
Address:
Phone:
Email:

X years of Business Analysis experience with in-depth knowledge of business processes


in banking and finacial industries. A thorough understanding of the Software
Development Life Cycle (SDLC) including but not limited to the various concepts such
as Requirement Gathering, Experience in the development of Client-Server and Web-
Based Applications. Possess a detailed-oriented nature with excellent communication,
interpersonal, problem solving skills, and recognized for being a valued team player.
• Proficient in all phases of Requirement Management, including gathering, analyzing,
detailing and tracking requirements.
• Experienced in documenting requirement using Unified Modeling Language (Use Case
and Activity Diagrams) also building business Process Flow Charts using tools such as
Visio and Rose.
• Skilled at reviewing test cases making sure they are in accordance with requirements, and
assist the overall testing process by activities such as Change and Defect Management and
conducting User Acceptance Testing.
• Strong understanding of various SDLC methodologies such as RUP, Waterfall and Agile
with hands on experience in all of them.
• Excellent communication skills and adept at facilitating walkthrough and training
sessions.

Technical Expertise:
Operating Systems MS Windows, DOS, UNIX
RDBMS MS Access, SQL, Oracle
SDLC Methodologies Rational Unified Process, Waterfall Methodology, Agile
Tracking Management Tools TestDirector, Rational ClearQuest, ReqPro
ERPs SAP (BW)
Software Eng Tools MS Office, MS Project, MS Visio, MS Dreamwaver.
Web Technologies HTML, XML
Modeling Tools Rational Rose, MS Visio

Professional Experience:

Banking (company name) duration


Sr. Business/Systems Analyst

xx Bank and Mortgage Company offers a full-range of mortgage products including conventional
loans/fixed or variable rate; a variety of financing programs you may not find elsewhere;
jumbo loans/fixed and variable rate; and innovative down payment, qualifying, and payment
options. The bank used a vendor provided LoanQuest Residential Lending System for their Loan
Origination purposes. It was a client – server based application. I was part of the maintenance
and enhancement team working on multiple projects simultaneously.

Responsibilities:

• Interfaced with stake holders and facilitated communication between client and the IT
department.
• Involved in creating targeted questionnaires and interviews for SME’s, clients and
business users to gather requirements.
• Involved in Feasibility and Risk Analysis to identify the business critical and high-risk
areas of the application.
• Worked as a liaison between business users and developers to submit requirements and
changes, clarify questions and issues.
• Extensively experienced for organizing and documenting requirements, preparing use
cases, writing business documents and reports in Pre- Testing phase.
• Developed data flow diagrams, illustrating the flow of data from the Legacy systems
into the Application database Tables, along with checkpoints for testing / verification.
• Prepared use case documents and utilized MS Visio to create UML diagrams including
use case, activity and class diagrams to extract business process flows and workflows,
thereby assisting development and quality assurance teams in understanding the
requirements.
• Worked on a team environment to finalize use cases to develop functional and detail
design specifications of the application.
• Participated in JAD sessions for requirement, feasibility and risk analysis with various
stakeholders, including designers, developers, QA and management to identify critical
and high risk areas of the application.
• Collaborated with the QA team in reviewing and validating test plans and test cases,
ensuring that the final application catered to the user requirements.
• Developed a user acceptance test plan and test case scenarios to guide a select group
of key end-users in testing the user interface and functionality of the application.
• Performed requirement walkthroughs with the Dev. and QA teams with the aim to
develop testing strategies and test plans such that test cases reflect user needs.
• Worked extensively with MS office suite for preparing status reports.

Bank ( company name) duration


Business Analyst

Xx Corporation is a diversified financial services company that provides a broad range of


banking, asset management, wealth management, and corporate and investment banking
products and services. Online Brokerage provides users with the tools to track and manage
their portfolios online 24/7. The module allows for viewing of account information in real time,
to review asset allocation by stocks, mutual funds, fixed income. Users can monitor realized
and unrealized gains/losses. The web application utilizes industry leading portfolio monitoring
and reporting features and provides proprietary research.

Responsibilities:
• Worked with business users to define product feature requests, business requirement
specifications, and change requests; documented requirements and transformed them
into functional and technical requirement specifications; modeled business process
flows using UML, activity and sequence diagrams.
• Conducted one-to-one meetings and web-Conferences as well as JAD sessions with
different stakeholders; analyzed and came up with suggestions providing consistent
process for the communication, escalation, and resolution of issues.
• Managing schedules while working with multiple teams.
• Documenting artifacts including, but not limited to, Functional Specifications, and the
Use Case Specifications.
• Articulated business requirements from user interviews, and workshops and then
converted requirements into technical specifications for developers.
• Working with other team members in reviewing requirements via the use of Use Case
Diagrams and Activity Diagrams.
• Conducted Daily Defect status and Progress meeting reports with QA team; carried out
defect tracking using Clear Quest for identifying and documenting all issues,
functionality gaps and new functionality needs.
• Involved in monitoring process flows and created Business Process Verification Plans,
conducted and wrote user test check list manual for UAT Phase.
Financial Corporation duration
Business Analyst
Xx Corporation which offers asset based loans for small growing businesses. Merchant looks at
the opportunities available, management and future prospects of the small business it is going to
finance. The client needs are constantly reviewed and credit lines can be adjusted accordingly.

A client server application called RIP (Risk Information Profile) was created whose goal was to
provide a tool to conduct the risk assessment of a potential customer and also to re-evaluate the
risks involved with a current customer. This tool involves authenticating the customer, checks
current credit limit and previous credit lines, payment history, fraud history, business history,
frequency of credit card usage, etc. This system was designed for user-friendliness for the
company employees and for optimizing the efficiency of the company’s risk analysis system.

Responsibilities:
• Thoroughly studied the inherent systems to have a clear understanding of the business
processes and associated system workflow.
• Conducted Gap analysis to understand new business model and additional functionalities
to be incorporated into the new application.
• Conducted JAD sessions for better understanding and refining of requirements in
coordination with multiple teams.
• Clarified and prioritized requirements by conducting brainstorming sessions with the
stakeholders and SMEs.
• Documented various documents including the Business Requirements Document and the
Use Case Specification Documents.
• Used Rational Requisite Pro as requirement gathering tool.
• Identified all use case components including basic, alternate and exception flows.
• Participated in various architectural development sessions to provide technical teams with
a better understanding of the requirements.
• Analyzed Requirements and created Use Cases, Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams
using MS Visio.
• Gathering business requirements and converting them into functional requirement
specifications and user requirement specifications. Used Rational Requisite Pro for
Requirement Document preparation.
• Carried out detailed and comprehensive business analysis with the RUP methodology.
• Prepared Business Process Models, which included modeling of all activities of the
business from conceptual to procedural level.
• Participated in Change control meetings recommending appropriate action after analysis
of changing requirements.
• Conducted multiple interviews to clarify requirements in order to identify use cases and
document UC Specifications.
• Assisted QA team by Reviewing test cases and clarifying requirements to ensure
complete coverage of requirements.
• Provided training to users, and involved in conducting UAT sessions to gain user
confidence and approval.
• Provided project manager with regular status updates assisting the overall project
management initiative.

For more BA Questions, Sample Resumes and Open Jobs – please visit:
http://futurethoughtsllc.com/InterviewQuestionsandAnswers.aspx

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