Banks, insurers and pension funds are dynamic but also complex organizations. Consultant Figou shares, "When I started working, I actually had no clear idea of what such a bank looks like inside. Terms like 'change,' 'run,' and 'circles' were all new to me!" Figou and Tim have now done several assignments as business analysts and now understand well how the departments work together. Together with their manager Jeroen, they give you an insight into the business analyst job.
To understand the role as a business analyst, you must first understand the run and change concept. In fact, almost all companies in the financial sector operate according to this concept. Almost all activities in the company can be divided into these two layers: Run and Change. These layers can be found in all areas: front and back office, and within finance & risk.
Run and change comes from the agile way of working. The vast majority of organizations in the financial sector work according to this approach. Here you often work in multidisciplinary teams and in short work "sprints" to achieve results quickly and respond flexibly to new developments.
The Run performs the daily activities necessary to keep the business running. Think of activities from preparing reports to performing accounting procedures for financial closing.
The run includes the following main lines of functions: risk reporting, controlling, asset management, financial accounting, financial reporting and management accounting.
💡To determine which position suits you best, it's smart to ask yourself which direction you want to go more in: accounting, controlling or modeling.
If you take a Finance or Risk traineeship with us, you will probably work in the run. Do you choose a career as a consultant? Then you'll definitely start in the run!
If you don't already have work experience, you have a basis in a theoretical framework. You understand the products, accounting and know the principles of how the bank works, but it's all theoretical. You want to experience, test and enrich this in practice.
Your first year you become part of the run to experience how such a bank works. Before you can think anything about anything or suggest improvements, you need to know: How do the lines run? Who should or should not I contact? You get to know the working methods and develop product knowledge.
Changing implements changes to optimize current processes. They sit between two departments and act as the support towards the run. Especially because banks want to work more and more efficiently with new technologies, but also because of laws and regulations, processes have to be changed.
Often it is a combination of both: tightened regulations mean that the process has to be scrutinized and is therefore the perfect opportunity for efficiency gains.
As a business analyst, you translate daily business operations into change. You collect requirements from the business and translate them into functional designs. These designs are then converted by developers into a technical design. This details exactly what needs to be programmed to unlock those new data attributes, implement new processes or modify the application.
The business analyst reports to the product owner. The product owner prioritizes the desired changes and schedules them into sprints.
The challenges as a business analyst
"As a business analyst, you also have to really push for the changes you come up with," says Tim. Tim explains, "What you often see is that the run doesn't have enough capacity to implement the changes. Other colleagues in the run actually shoot into resistance because they've been working with a particular system for decades.
But even the product owner may not see your improvement proposals as a priority, so other projects take priority. So you have to get the stakeholder on board. Within Solid Professionals you get guidance on how to do that from more senior colleagues. It is important that you proactively ask them about this yourself."
After two years you have developed into a generalist. After this, you will specialize more and more in your niche. If you want to move away from the content and instead get energy from completing a project according to a tight schedule, you can develop into a coordination role.
Suppose you think the process optimization piece is just cool, then you can actually develop further as a black belt. At some point, you might take a number of junior consultants under your wing to handle an entire project at an organization from head to tail.
So there are many different paths you can follow: from project manager to data analyst, to modeling expert.
Curious for more insights into the work as a consultant? Check out the stories of Jisse or Robbert.