Careers in Finance

Corporate Finance Specialization

Treasurer:

Duties involve supervision of Treasury department which is involved in financial planning, raising funds, cash management and acquiring and disposing of assets. This is an upper management job which requires both analytical skill and the ability to manage and motivate people.

Financial Analyst:

Duties involve determining financing needs, analyzing capital budgeting projects, long-range financial planning, analyzing possible acquisitions and asset sales, visiting credit agencies to explain firm's position, monitoring the market price of the firm's securities. Analyzing leasing agreements and determining needs and methods of dealing with derivatives. This challenging job requires good analytical skills, computer skills and a broad understanding of finance.

Investor Relations Officer:

Duties involve dealing with the investing public by disseminating financial information, responding to queries from institutional investors, issuing press releases to explain corporate events and organizing tele-conferences with investors. This challenging job involves contacts with top-level executives and requires understanding of finance and public relations. Many who hold this job have backgrounds in PR or advertising.

Controller:

Duties involve financial planning, accounting, financial reporting and cost analysis. Will get involved in property revenue, benefits, derivatives, lease and joint interest accounting. May need to develop forecasting models to project revenues and costs. May be called on to implement or work with a complex costing system efforts at financial re-engineering, transfer pricing issues or interface with auditors. This job requires extensive accounting experience. Often holders of this position enter a company from a Big Six accounting firm.

Credit Manager:

Duties include establishing policies for granting credit to suppliers, setting guidelines for collecting on credit and considering whether to securitize receivables. This job requires knowledge of the customer and ability to analyze accounting statements.

Markets and Investments Specialization

Credit Analyst:

This is a common entry level job which requires that you evaluate business and consumer loan applications made to your bank. Your duties include projecting a company's future cash flow, evaluating its current financial soundness, visiting and interacting with financial people at businesses and dealing with lenders. Your success in this job will depend on how detail-oriented you are, your knowledge of accounting and your ability to communicate.

Loan Officer:

This is a highly desirable job in banking which involves making loans to businesses and consumers. Being a loan officer requires that you have good selling skills, an ability to understand a business and a solid understanding of how banking works. Most people in upper management at banks were once loan officers.

Branch Manager:

You would be responsible for overseeing all activities at your branch including opening new accounts, loan origination, solving customer problems, foreign exchange and safe deposit boxes. Most importantly, you are responsible for establishing relations with customers. This job can be very satisfying, is never boring and requires you to be hands-on. Many bank managers start as tellers or customer service representatives.

Trust Officer:

In this job you would deliver trust services, financial products and advice to bank customers (often more upscale ones). This work will give you knowledge of business, investing, estate planning, taxes, probate law and will involve a lot of counseling.

Mortgage Banker:

Your job will be to make mortgage loans to home buyers and businesses. This involves heavy contact with real estate professionals, credit checks, and dealing with new buyers. Today, many loans are sold to other investors in the mortgage backed securities market. This job has a good future because an increasing fraction of the population is likely to buy a house in the future.

Security Analyst:

The function of an equity securities research analyst involves analyzing a company's financial statements, researching company and industry trends with company management and other industry sources, and preparing a report with the purpose of making a recommendation as to whether the stock of a company is attractive or unattractive for purchase or retention in a portfolio. Fixed income or bond analysts do much the same thing except their focus is primarily on credit worthiness and factors which influence interest rate levels and trends. In many cases, analysts will specialize in one or a few industries. Such analysts are referred to as industry specialists. Or, an analyst will not specialize, but will analyze and follow a large number of industries. Such an analyst is referred to as a generalist. Often the size or character of the firm will determine whether analysts specialize or are generalists.

Portfolio Manager:

Using the inputs of the security analyst, a portfolio manager is the investment professional who typically makes the final decision on a security and executes it in the portfolio as a buy or sell transaction. But portfolio management goes well beyond picking stocks and bonds. It embraces an integrated process of defining investor objectives and constraints, portfolio policies and strategies, and integrating these with capital market expectations. Therefore, a portfolio manager's orientation is usually broader than that of a security analyst.

Other jobs in banking:

involve accounting, marketing and advertising, private banking, installment loans, loan servicing, correspondent banking, personnel, operations and communications.

This material comes from http://www-biz.zum.edu/carmfo.htm