Business Analyst - Jade Vincent

Investment Banks have the most extraordinary number of jobs within them - it can be completely mind-boggling. Every time we went near one, we found a whole new department or group of people that did something we’d never heard of. This seems to be due to the immense specialisation within banks, where it can be quite possible to sit next to someone but have no idea what they do.

There are a couple of major distinctions worth highlighting. Investment Banking or ‘IBD’ tends to be the department which most people imagine when thinking about an investment bank. They are the ones doing huge M&A deals, putting in incredibly long hours (14 hours plus each day - including weekends, for months at a time - is not uncommon) and schmoozing with business leaders. Work/life balance is not easily found, but on the flipside the work you do will likely be high-profile and give you an enormous breadth of business and finance experience. This means that if you want to leave London or Investment Banking at some point you shouldn’t have a problem, as the skills gained are very transferable. We've met ex-bankers in companies ranging from renewable energy start-ups to large pharmaceuticals.

Capital Markets is where you’ll find the traders, salespeople and research analysts. They’re market-based and are the ones you see on TV shouting down phones and pacing frantically in front of five flickering computer screens. They’re monitoring market activity and reacting immediately to any changes. It’s noisier and a bit more adrenalin-fuelled than IBD. One of the big perks of Capital Markets (other than the actual job), is that the hours tend to reflect those of the market. That means early starts, with most people in the office by 6.30am, but it also means you tend to be out by six in the evening - and there is almost never weekend work. So if you’re an early riser the work/life balance is pretty good, especially compared to IBD. One limiting factor is that you’re in a highly specialised, role usually in a very specific market area, so there’s not much in the way of transferable skills. If you’re an FX institutional salesperson it’s not that easy to move into another product area, and you’re going to be tied to working in London (or another major financial centre).

Beyond these two areas you have a massive range of middle and back office functions. There’s Technology, Operations, Legal, Finance, Marketing and HR for a start. So if banking interests you then it’s definitely worth looking at the breadth of what’s on offer. The other thing that struck us about banks was just how diverse they were. Without doubt, they had the most mixed workforces we saw, with every member of a team often from a different country. While this makes for a really dynamic and interesting work environment, it does mean that when you’re applying for a job, you’re not just up against your peers in this country but across the whole world - so that application form had better stand out!

Who are you and what do you do?

I am Jade Vincent - I work for Investment Banking Technology for Merrill Lynch and I am currently a business analyst.

What is Investment Banking?

Investment Banking is a term used to describe a type of bank which focuses on trading, so trading on stocks and shares, bonds, hedge funds, which are more the debt rather that the equity, advising firms, mergers and acquisitions, whether it is advisable for them to raise funds or to sort of float and become public companies. That is the simple essence, but investment banks and the work that they do with businesses aid the whole mechanics of the financial markets both locally in the UK and globally.

What attracted you to this career?

I started off as graduate at Nottingham University and when applying for graduate roles I went to a lot of recruitment fairs and even went to a session for women who were driven and particularly talented, and there was a lot of Merrill Lynch stalls and events. The one thing that made Merrill Lynch stand out - and I was interested in investment banking and marketing, markets particularly - but Merrill Lynch stood out because of the people, they took the time to talk to me and answer my questions and it really made a difference.

What does your job involve?

I currently work for a division called GBT, which is Global Business Technology and you can sort of think of it as a sandwich, you have the business, which is the bank, you then have Global Business Technology and underneath that you have the infrastructure technology, so the infrastructure is then networked, these service all the nitty gritty stuff. You have the business technology which are all the applications and the business analysts liaise with the businesses, gather their requirements and implement solutions which sit on the infrastructure.

What do you do on a typical day?

A typical working day - I am normally in the office around eight o’clock in the morning, I make sure all the applications are up and running. I check my emails from overnight - because we work in a global team so you are guaranteed that the guys in New York or South America have been sending emails - so I need to catch up on all of those. Also Asia will have been in working for a long time so we have got to catch up. I also do a lot of project work and mainly the afternoon is spent doing conference calls with the States. Then ensuring I gather all the requirements of the business.

Interviewer: What else would you be doing during the day, talking to people?

Yes I would be talking to the business, so I have several meetings with business managers and a lot of the bankers to make sure the applications they are using fit their requirements or if they have any new ideas or solutions, or anything they need or problems or issues that need solving. Generally I do documentation, troubleshooting, implement fixes. We also manage a third party vendor, so the software we use is actually a third party software - which means we have to manage the vendor as well as the business so it is quite difficult - but very good and interesting to do. There are times when I have to work long hours if, for example, we have a deal launching, so for example when RBS bought ABN AMRO there were a lot of large deal implementations within the market, which meant we had to work long hours through the night until the deal was completed. Working in technology as well, there are some times when we have to work during the weekends to do implementations, but it is just part of the job.

Describe the process of your work?

A lot of the work we do is probably amending or gathering requirements to change work flow and improve business work process within current applications. So one example is when we currently send a manual prospectus out to clients on deals, it could be 150 page document, imagine all the trees and paper we are wasting, if we could send the documents electronically, we could get them quicker, we could get electronic results, we can also have monitoring to make sure that they have been send or received, by implementing that sort of solution. But you have also got the legality side of it, so we also have to liaise with the compliance office. We have to liaise with the business managers themselves, we have to liaise with the guys who actually work on the desk, and work with the clients to actually find what their requirements are and who we can work and how the business process works and whether we reflect that in the application and the solution. So after we have gathered that information we can then document it and try and design a solution that can solve that problem.

Interviewer: And what would you do on a big deal?

For example, I mentioned that Merrill Lynch supported the RBS purchase of ABN AMRO, the reason why we are quite busy on big deals is because we they can be global so we can have desks in New York, London and Asia, all trying to raise funds, all working on the same application. There can be 100s of people working on it at the same time so have got questions coming through, there might be issues with the application there may be complexities because you have got other banks who are also linked into the application. It can go from being quite simple and can suddenly build from having different banks in different locations in different countries, it can evolve and then you have got questions coming from every direction. Because we look after it we have got to be ready to field and answer those questions.

How did you end up in Capital Markets?

I started off on the graduate scheme at Merrill's and started off in the Finance technology department of banking, I was actually given a technology development role which was not anything I was interested in at all and I persevered and then the opportunity came up to be a business analyst within the capital markets within the same larger department but within another sub team, so I took the opportunity and it is something I have really enjoyed.

Interviewer: And why not technology department?

Some people enjoy programming, some people enjoy more project work, which is something I enjoy. I enjoy gathering people’s requirements, talking to users, understanding, designing solutions, documenting them, working with the developers - but not necessarily developing myself.

What are the specialisms within your industry?

There are lots of roles within technology, you can go from being a designer, to project manager, to database analyst, you can work with server.  There are a wide variety of topics and roles which are within the technologies that we have and we house.

What are the best bits about your job?

The exciting part of my job is that we support capital markets and capital markets is the think division between investment banking and the actual equity and fixed income markets so when we are releasing IPO, so people are releasing shares and floating on the stock exchange, or people are raising funds like hedge funds to raise debt in order to do other kind of things, we are in the nitty gritty side of investment banking and or originating on getting that deal and releasing it into the financial market. The best bit is when you have worked all night on a deal and you see the Financial Times the next day and your deal is on the front page of the Financial Times and you know that your application and work has helped that work and helped that get into the market, it is quite satisfying, quite sad but satisfying.

What are the worst bits about your job?

There are a lot of conference calls because we are a global team which means you have to be very good at managing your time, because your project work can be delayed or you are stressed because there are issues and you also have to manage a conference call on your daily routine, that can get quite monotonous but it is part of the job. There is a lot of documentation.

Interviewer: Is it quite pressured, what you do?

At time yes - I don’t want to say it is nasty, but granted if something is not working and we have got a billion dollar deal going through and something is not working and you guarantee someone is going to shout and unfortunately because we look after the software, we might get the brunt of the shouting.

What has been your greatest achievement?

Aside from my actual role there are lots of opportunities to get involved in within Merrill to get involved in other things. For example I helped build an internal philanthropy website which raised a lot of money, where people can pledge money. We raised over million pounds and it was only because people did it through the website, so I feel quite proud that I have done a really good job and it is something I feel quite proud of - even if it is outside of my daily job it was really interesting.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

The salary is definitely competitive, a lot of the graduates from my university who have gone to work in different industries - still gone to work in technology, but for different industries, for example consumer goods industries, consultancy firms - I know the salary within investment banking and banking in general is a lot better, particularly for technology, than it is in other industries.

Interviewer: And are there any other perks that come with that?

There are benefits - most firms give benefits, you get health care, dental care, you can get discount travel, hotel rates, there are lots of benefits.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

I have a BlackBerry and a mobile phone so I am contactable 24/7, in theory, but it just depends on your work/life balance that people choose to adopt. Everybody is different and everybody has a different approach to work. The work hours - generally I am in at eight and I probably leave around six or seven o'clock. There are times, as I said when we will be working on deals and I have to stay until midnight or longer, or sometimes I have to be in at six, sometimes I have to work weekends - but there is give and take, there might be times when I can work from home if I've got a delivery. But there are pros and cons, there are good benefits and there are different departments within technology and different departments within the business so all the technology departments support different areas. So you might find that the working times of people in technology vary greatly across the departments.

Interviewer: So because you work in capital markets you will adhere to some of their times, where as if you were perhaps in different markets you would adhere to theirs, is that what you mean?

Exactly, because I support investment banking the hours I work sometimes can reflect the hours the investment banking guys do. However, if someone for example supports the equity trading law or the equity traders, you will find they might only work just before market opens and just after market closes. With technology roles, there might be times when you need to do implementations at the weekend because it is the time when markets are closed, so it is a good time to go in and get tidied up.

Is there much in the way of travel?

I am quite lucky because I joined on the Merrill Lynch programme and I spent two months in New York for my training. I know that depending on the projects that you are working on that there are opportunities to travel, for example one of my friends works for implementation technology and she helped implement the technology in the Russian office and every other week she was going to Russia. So there are fantastic opportunities to go to, for example, Madrid, Kuwait, New York - there are opportunities to travel, it just depends on the project that you are working on.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

I think within the financial markets you have to be based in the city, although within technology we have a data centre in Camberley, in Surrey so you can be on the slight outskirts of the city, but generally within investment banking you will be based in what we call the City, so the London financial district.

What is the working environment like?

It is an eclectic mix of nationalities, ages and sexes. It is a very open plan office, there is an opportunity to shout which most people do take - but it is good, it encourages people to ask questions and have conversations so people don’t sit in their little corner and think 'oh I don’t know what I'm going to do', because there is always the opportunity to ask questions and learn and it is one thing that is encouraged at Merrill. I am quite lucky - I work in a team of four and three of us are actually girls, so we are quite diverse for technology - but it is different and there are lots of different people, you can’t say there is a stereotypical type. I know people think investment bankers have slicked-back hair and pinstripe suits but I can’t say that you can see that at all.

How did you get into your job?

From my experience, I know you can apply through the graduate programme. It is an online application form; there are lots of steps, online assessment and then a long full-day assessment centre. But I know there are a few people that are graduates and have applied through normal routes, whether that is through recruitment consultants agencies, or just seen the job and applied generally, handed in their CV and gone through the normal interview process that way.

What are the key skills required for your job?

I think if you are going to work in technology you are going to have to have an aptitude for problem solving and you have to enjoy it and to be quite analytical, but as long as you have a general enjoyment for something that you will do, that is usually mean you will do well.

Interviewer: So do you totally understand all the technologies, although you don’t actually do all the technology stuff, do you understand it and get it or is it not something that you necessarily need to have?

I know I studied computer science at university but I did avoid a lot of the full on techie modules, I did a lot of the project management and a lot of general project work and group projects, and everyone is going to have scaling and strengths and weaknesses and there are jobs and roles and opportunities to suit different people’s strengths. So obviously I am more business aligned and enjoy being more analytical so I enjoy being a business analyst, whereas there are certain people who are technologically minded and quite interested in the nitty gritty programming and algorithms and stuff so they will probably go to more a development role.  But there are a vast reigns of opportunities within technology and I hate for someone to perceive that if you go to technology you are going to sit at a computer and programme because there are lots of varied opportunities for someone to take.

I suppose one of the main key skills I know people think that people in technology are quite geeky and don’t really talk or have very good interpersonal skills but if you are going to come and work for a large corporation then you need to be able to communicate and talk, so I suppose that is the main key skill, an understanding of the financial markets, an understanding of technology, how it is going to evolve, how it is going to go forward. Also to be quite analytical and to be able to solve problems because there may be a case where you manager says this doesn’t work anymore, someone is changing this field and you have got to work out what we are going to do to solve the problems and try and work out how it will work.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

Go to the recruitment fairs at university, take your CV along ask questions - because that is the point of the recruitment session, for you to ask questions and to get the answers. Get to know the people that are there because you might bump into them if you do come in for your interview.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

I think it varies, on people’s attitudes; one thing about Merrill is they are very meritocratic and you may get a bonus or a promotion depending on your personal aptitude and how well you have performed within your role. So there are general progression paths that are set out by your management, you have training - they are very keen on developing you personally - but it is all about whether you show the aptitude and you are keen and you will be rewarded if you do work.

Interviewer: So where would you go from where you are at the moment, what are the steps you would take?

I joined as a senior specialist and I am hopefully aiming to be an AVP by the end of the year, but you don’t know - it all depends on how well I work.

How does the role change over time?

I think you will gradually get more responsibility, the more you prove that you can do them, the more responsibility you get and so your role evolves and grows and the more people come underneath you and hopefully you can just naturally progress.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

Definitely - I know I did a year in industry, so I worked for Pepsi-co, the consumer goods company for 18 months and the experience I did there helped me with my current role, within technology your skills are transferable, lots of people who I know who have left investment banking and gone to work for consultancy firms or gone to work for consumer goods companies or even software, the skills are transferable. You can even take the opportunity to take a sabbatical if you have worked for Merrill for five years, if it is approved. There are lots of opportunities if you wish to take a break and move on, it all depends if you apply; a 'you don’t ask you don’t get' kind of thing.

What's the application process like?

When you apply for the graduate scheme you inform them of the areas you are interested in you apply, whether you want to go into the infrastructure side or the business technology side but within those there are different roles. Once you are in which pigeonhole you have elected to go to you can then mention the kind of areas you are interested in and then they can look at the roles that are available and put you on a place in the programme.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

I think it’s important if you do want to come and work for an investment bank that you do try and have an awareness of the financial markets generally. So good resources to read are the Economist, Financial Times, even the business papers in the Sunday newspapers as are quite handy. There are lots of websites out there that have lots of financial sectors in, even things in the morning like the City AM paper in London, anything to build on your understanding of the financial markets and the terms that are used because you might come to work here and think 'I don’t even know what people are talking about', so it is better to have a sort of understanding so you can build on your foundations.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

The age-old question, I probably would have gone into fashion or something completely different from technology, which is really quite sad but never mind.