How to Pursue a Career as a Financial Analyst?

Many professionals and executives want to know how to start a career in financial analytics. Making a career in financial analytics might seem easy to an outsider, but it requires a massive amount of perseverance, patience, and hard work to make a name for oneself in this competitive and challenging field. Every financial analyst’s decision opens new insights, learning, and opportunities. With the right qualification and skills, every decision a financial analyst makes evokes desired results.
This article will discuss in detail how to make a career in financial analytics. We’ll also discuss the prerequisites required to become a financial analyst and more in the article.

What Is Financial Analytics?

Experts define financial analytics as the process of evaluating projects, budgets, and other finance-related transactions, tools, and techniques regularly to track performance and discrepancies. Financial analytics evaluates different financial tools, techniques, and processes used by the company on pre-decided or standardized parameters.

To many, finance management meaning might correlate to that of financial analytics, but they both are two different processes that the company’s finance department performs. While finance management is planning, organizing, controlling, and directing an organization’s financial activities, financial analytics is the process of monitoring the enterprise’s financial performance.

How To Start A Career In Financial Analytics?

In this data-driven world, companies are recruiting candidates with the skills to understand and analyze data. Therefore, the first step in starting a career in analytics is to take up a bachelor’s or master’s degree in financial analysis or a similar field. These courses will equip aspirants with skills that will lead to effective analysis of financial data. Below are the skills that an individual learns through financial analytics courses.

• Communication skills
• Organization skills
• Project management skills
• Leadership skills
• Data visualization
• Machine learning
• Predictive analytics

While some aspiring candidates also pursue certification courses to learn novel analytical skills and in-depth knowledge about the latest concepts and trends emerging in the field, others join internship programmes to understand the practical application of concepts learned in their degree curriculum.

Who Is A Financial Analyst?

The financial performance of a company can be hampered due to various factors- including microeconomic, macroeconomic, erratic market conditions, etc. A financial analyst evaluates the company’s performance by analyzing its financial tools, techniques, and processes. They also research the microeconomic and macroeconomic market conditions to predict the company’s future performance or field the firm operates in to prepare for the uncertain beforehand. In the succeeding paragraphs, we will be discussing how to become a financial analyst. Let’s start by looking at the prerequisites required to become a financial analyst.

How To Become A Financial Analyst?

Here is a step-by-step guide to help pivot your career as a financial analyst.

1. Start with the basics
The first step to becoming a financial analyst starts with undertaking a bachelor’s or master’s degree in finance or a similar field. Most of the current financial analysts have opted for finance-related majors like statistics, accounting, or economics, which helps the candidates learn the fundamentals of financial analytics and equip them with skills that help them complete all tasks efficiently.
Many finance analyst roles deal with purchasing and selling of financial products or services, for which, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) requires the entities (company and analyst) to register and comply to their rules while conducting sale or purchase of financial products or services. Therefore, aspirants should be registered with the FINRA before starting the job and have an active license with them.

2. Move on to advance courses
Most of the current financial analysts have opted for certification courses to gain a deep insight into the current trends sprouting in the field. Also, to learn skills that help solve complex finance-related problems and introduce efficiency in their daily task. However, suppose you want to make advancements in your career or learn new things related to analytics, then take up different online certification courses.

Emeritus India has some of the best financial analysis courses offered in collaboration with renowned Indian and international institutes. These online financial analysis courses help aspirants learn new skills and get in-depth knowledge about the current trends in the field.

3. Hone your skills
Here are the top skills a financial analyst must master to secure a prestigious job:

• Accounting skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Communication skills
• Technical skills
• Leadership and management skills

4. Apply for internships
Many financial analysts join an internship programme before starting a full-time job. The main reason behind it is believed to be that it helps them apply their learned knowledge in real-life. It also helps them learn new skills on-the-job.

5. Take up a job
The last step is taking up a job as a financial analyst. Take up a job that ensures maximum growth and career progress.

What Does A Financial Analyst Do?

A financial analyst performs various roles and responsibilities in an organization besides evaluating the company’s financial performance. Here are some of the roles and responsibilities performed by the financial analyst:

• Financial planning
• Portfolio management
• Investment-related discussions
• Build Excel models
• Make forecasts

How to Start Your Journey As A Financial Analyst

The current business environment is data-driven, and data-literate people are valued across industries. That’s why job roles like data analyst, financial analyst, and business analyst are gaining momentum. Therefore, if you plan to become a financial analyst, get ready to experience a roller coaster ride with growth and career progress. Start your journey as a financial analyst by undertaking different certification courses offered by Emeritus.

Emeritus India has partnered with renowned Indian and international educational institutes to offer some of the best finance-related courses to working professionals and newcomers. To accelerate your career as a financial analyst, enrol for our certification courses today.