Compared with accounting, some may think the career of financial analyst provides relatively more interesting, more technical, and faster career development. But is this true? How does financial analysis work in reality? How can one become a financial analyst?

This article can answer all your doubts!

What is a Financial Analyst?

Financial analysts perform the functions of management accounting, analyze the financial data, analyze the past, control the present, and plan for the future, thereby helping enterprises to improve operating efficiency and maximize the interests of shareholders.

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Career Prospects of Financial Analysts

With more and more attention being paid to data analysis, private enterprise business philosophy and corporate structure are constantly improving, and the degree of automation of financial systems is getting higher and higher. Many large state-owned enterprises, scientific and technical corporations, and other companies urgently need financial analysts.

Many people also have a question. Now that AI is getting hotter, will financial analysts be replaced by AI?

The answer is of course No. The machine is more engaged in computing. The most important trait of people is their ability to deal with complex business problems and communicate with others.

The job of a professional financial analyst is very high value-added work, not ordinary accounting and bookkeeping. Such work is irreplaceable by artificial intelligence.

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4 Skills that Financial Analysts Must Have

Financial Analysis Thinking

There are a lot of learning materials for financial analysts on the Internet, and there are so many knowledge points that you often do not know where to start. If you are trying to become a financial analyst, it is recommended that you first learn accounting knowledge as the basis, and then learn from financial cost management and company strategy and risk management, which will make your value in the company more obvious, and not limited to just do an accounting job.

Financial Data Processing

As a financial analyst, facing a huge amount of financial data every day, you must master the ability to process data quickly, do a good job of data cleaning, handle dirty data, improve the efficiency of data processing, and get rid of repetitive and boring work.

FineReport’s data entry function supports filling data into the database, and the regular scheduling function can send daily, weekly, and monthly reports regularly, eliminating the hassle of manual operations, and everything becomes automated.

At the same time, the parameter query function helps the staff from different departments to quickly find the data he needs, which improves the communication efficiency between various departments.

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Financial Data Visualization 

An important skill for financial analysts is to display processed financial data in reports and other ways. If you are still using Excel to make reports, that is not enough. The speed at which Excel handles large amounts of data is frustrating. At this time, you need an easy-to-use reporting tool to help you realize the dynamic analysis of financial data and make financial reports move.

Here we use FineReport as an example. FineReport supports multiple database connections. It is easy to connect data from different departments together for processing. The Excel-like operation method is very easy to get started.

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In terms of data visualization, FineReport supports a variety of charts, and there are dashboard templates that can be directly applied for use. Whether you want to make reports quickly or customize dynamic reports, you can easily complete it.

Compared with the reports produced by Excel, will the dashboard with rich interaction like this make your leaders more satisfied?

Industry Data Acquisition Capabilities

As a financial analyst, another very important skill is the ability to quickly obtain and understand industry data. Keeping up with the times can ensure that your management and strategic planning skills will not be outdated, and you can achieve vertical and horizontal financial analysis.

For most financial analysts who have no programming foundation, there are many ways to crawl data. Mastering a programming language can often add a lot of points for you. Among the many programming languages, Python is probably the easiest programming language to start with, and there are many ready-made codes on the Internet, only need to replace some settings.

How to Make a Good Financial Statement

Financial reporting is the core skill required for a financial analyst. Here I recommend two ways to help you develop the skills for financial statement analysis.

Firstly, you can refer to the 3 Steps to an Effective Financial Statement Analysis. This quick guide introduce how to analyze a financial statement step by step for dummies.

Then, if you don’t know which indicators your boss cares about, you can read the performance report of investors in listed companies to see from what angle a company’s CFO interprets the company’s performance and how to present cold figures. You can also read the “Management Discussion and Analysis” section of the financial reports of listed companies.

In the reading process, the focus of your study should be on the following aspects:

• How to write a simple and focused title of a financial report.
• From which aspects reflect the performance.
• How to analyze the cause of a certain result.
• How to speak with charts.

FineReport provides well-rounded financial solutions. The following is one of the financial statements made with FineReport, if you are interested, you can download and have a trial.

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Final Thoughts

Financial analysts are one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. Is it a hard career? Well, sometimes it is. But keep in mind that with a good working habit and analysis tools, the work of financial analysts can be much easier.

Now take a free trial and boost your business with FineReport!

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