Business Analyst
91% skill overlap
Your role
Business Analyst (Banking)
Full profileYour role
- L3 salary
- Not published yet
- Upcoming dated changes
- 7 changes ahead
What the role does
A Business Analyst in banking defines what a change in a bank's processes or systems must deliver. The role gathers requirements from front office, operations, finance, risk or compliance, maps processes along the trade or loan lifecycle, writes functional specifications and supports testing. Typical changes include new products, regulatory projects, system migrations and automation. The role combines business analysis methods with knowledge of financial products, the trade lifecycle and the data that flows between bank systems.
Read a day in the life
A day in the life
The analyst joins the morning stand-up of a project to move bond trade settlement to a new platform. The first task is a workshop with settlement staff to walk through each step from trade capture to confirmation and settlement, noting where data is entered twice and which exceptions are handled by hand. Late morning goes to writing the mapping of trade fields between the booking system and the new platform, checking with a data analyst which fields carry the settlement instructions. After lunch the analyst meets the compliance team, who need a new report for transaction reporting, and agrees the required fields and timing. Mid-afternoon brings user acceptance testing: two trades failed to settle in the test environment, so the analyst traces the cause with testers and developers and logs a defect. The day ends with updating the requirements log, confirming sign-off dates with operations managers and preparing questions for tomorrow's session with the reconciliations team.
Levels
- L1 Starting out
- L2 Independent
- L3 Senior or specialist
- L4 Leads a team or an area
- L5 Leads the function
Full level descriptions and job titles
The EFO level names are the common scale; job titles differ between employers.
| Level | What the work looks like | Typical years | Typical job titles |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 Starting out | Documents processes and requirements for a defined area, prepares test cases and data mappings, and learns banking products, the trade lifecycle and bank systems under supervision. | 0-2 | Banks: Analyst, Junior Analyst, Associate (asset servicing), Trainee, GraduateAsset servicers: Junior, Specialist (entry), Officer |
| L2 Independent | Owns the analysis for a workstream end to end, runs workshops with front office or operations, writes specifications and leads user acceptance testing for that scope. | 2-5 | Banks: Analyst / Senior Analyst, AssociateAsset servicers: Specialist, Senior Specialist, Senior Officer |
| L3 Senior or specialist | Senior analyst or subject matter expert. Handles complex changes across systems or regulatory projects, designs target processes and data flows, and coaches other analysts. | 5-9 | Banks: Senior Associate, AVP, Assistant ManagerAsset servicers: Senior Specialist, Expert, Team Lead (small team) |
| L4 Leads a team or an area | Leads a team of analysts or the analysis for a large banking programme, owns quality of requirements and testing, and is the escalation point for scope and design issues. | 8-14 | Banks: VP, Manager, Senior ManagerAsset servicers: Team Lead, Manager, Head of Section |
| L5 Leads the function | Head of business analysis for a business line or change function. Accountable for analysis practice across a legal entity or region, sets standards and advises senior sponsors. | 12+ | Banks: Director, Executive Director, Managing Director, Head of functionAsset servicers: Head of Department, Director |
Skills
Where the skill weights come from
Each role lists its skills with a tier and a weight. The weights of one role add up to 100 percent.
Source: the EFO role catalogue, built from the ESCO classification and reviewed by the editors.
The percentage is the skill's share of the role; the bars are drawn relative to the anchor skill, which is shown full.
Critical
- Requirements gathering and documentationWeight 13.3%Relevant to you
- Process mapping and redesignWeight 8.9%Relevant to you
- Functional analysis between business and ITWeight 8.9%Relevant to you
- User acceptance testing coordinationWeight 8.9%Relevant to you
- Trade lifecycleWeight 8.9%Relevant to you
Important and supporting skills 17
Important
- Agile delivery (Scrum, Kanban)Weight 4.4%Relevant to you
- Querying data with SQLWeight 4.4%Relevant to you
- Process mapping tools (Visio, Lucidchart)Weight 4.4%Relevant to you
- Professional written communicationWeight 4.4%Relevant to you
- Stakeholder managementWeight 4.4%Relevant to you
- Attention to detailWeight 4.4%Relevant to you
- Structuring ambiguous problemsWeight 4.4%Relevant to you
- Project tools (Jira, Asana)Weight 4.4%Relevant to you
Supporting
- Project planning and dependenciesWeight 2.2%Relevant to you
- Data cleaning and validationWeight 2.2%Relevant to you
- Defining and using KPIsWeight 2.2%Relevant to you
- Verbal communication and presentingWeight 2.2%Relevant to you
- Design judgment and trade-offsWeight 2.2%Relevant to you
- Data migration and cutoverWeight 2.2%Relevant to you
Useful
- API design and integrationWeight 0.7%Relevant to you
- Collaboration and teamworkWeight 0.7%Relevant to you
- Visualisation tools (Power BI, Tableau)Weight 0.7%Relevant to you
Processes
The work the role takes part in.
- Change and project delivery
- Securities settlement
- Trade capture and booking
- Trade confirmation and affirmation
What each process covers
- Change and project deliveryMain
- Securities settlementMain
- Trade capture and bookingMain
- Trade confirmation and affirmationMain
Where the role concentrates
How AI is changing the role
AI tools now draft requirements and test cases, summarise regulations and meeting notes, and help trace data lineage between systems.
Read the full assessment
AI tools now draft requirements and test cases, summarise regulations and meeting notes, and help trace data lineage between systems. Routine documentation and mapping work takes less time. The European Banking Authority reports growing use of AI in EU banks with stronger expectations on governance and data quality. Value grows in product and process knowledge, judging trade-offs between business needs and controls, and checking that automated outputs are correct. The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 lists analytical thinking and technological literacy among the fastest-growing skills.
Dated changes for this role
- ESMA guidelines on allocations and confirmations for T+1Relevant to you
- CSDR settlement discipline rules updated for T+1 in three stepsRelevant to you
- ECB Pontes: DLT settlement in central bank moneyRelevant to you
- ECB digital euro pilot with 36 payment providersRelevant to you
- Switzerland and Liechtenstein move to T+1 with the EU and UKRelevant to you
Salary snapshot
Salary figures are not published yet
The L3 salary range for this role, with its sources, will appear here when the salaries section opens.
Certifications
- PMP
- PRINCE2 Practitioner
- Certified ScrumMaster
- Professional Scrum Master I
- CBAP
- CAPM
Concepts to know
- COREP (Common Reporting)
- Data lineage
- ISO 20022
- Target operating model (TOM)
- User acceptance testing (UAT)
- Acceptance criteria
- API (application programming interface)
- Batch processing
All 24 concepts
- BCBS 239 (risk data aggregation)
- CBPR+ (Cross-Border Payments and Reporting Plus)
- Core banking system
- Critical data element (CDE)
- CRR3
- Current and future state
- Cutover
- Data dictionary
- Data migration
- Data owner
- Defect management
- DPM (Data Point Model)
- EBA taxonomy (reporting framework release)
- EMIR reporting
- FMI (Financial market infrastructure)
- Gap analysis
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Roles that need many of the same skills, by weighted skill overlap, with the skills you would need to add.
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Your role
Do this job? Suggest a correction
Sources
Trade lifecycleThe trade lifecycle is the sequence of steps a trade goes through from order to final maturity: execution, capture, enrichment, confirmation, clearing, settlement, reporting, lifecycle events such as resets, coupons and corporate actions, and termination. Front, middle and back office teams each own parts of it, with controls at each hand-off.
User acceptance testing (UAT)User acceptance testing is the final test phase in which business users check that a new or changed system supports their real processes and meets the agreed requirements and acceptance criteria. Formal UAT sign-off is usually a condition for go-live.
Data lineageData lineage is the documented path a data item follows from its original source through every system, transformation and control until it reaches a report, model or decision. It shows where a number came from and what was done to it. End-to-end lineage is a core expectation of the ECB for risk data.