Financial Accounting Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

The Business Analyst has broad-based responsibilities for the functional design, business line specification and deployment of Finance Systems and Process changes initiatives at both an Americas Legal Entity and IHC level. The candidate will work as a team member of projects. General responsibilities include:

• Generate, analyse, and document user requirements and business processes for IT development (BRD).
• Undertake data assessment, data gap analysis and remediation.
• Plan and manage user acceptance and migration testing up to successful delivery of end-product or remediation solution.
• Liaise and coordinate cross-functionally to review requirements with stakeholders to enable design and development in liaison with IT, coordinate testing, support go-live, and provide long term support for operational readiness, governance, controls, and aftercare.
• Ensure proper and adequate aftercare and follow-up to remediate any unforeseen issues.
• Manage issues and escalate effectively.
• Ensure on-time quality delivery of projects and tasks assigned.
• Facilitate working group meetings with effective presentation materials and documentation; prepare agendas, document-meeting outcomes and communicate to stakeholders and management.
• Support enhancement efforts of the overall control environment, including upstream processes and controls.

Specific responsibilities for the Finance Implementation Project Business Line Analyst role:

• Sound knowledge of lifecycle of financial Global Market and Global Banking products and banking processes, ability to navigate complex data systems and architecture.
• Work closely with Finance Strategy group for current and upcoming new transactions or activities
• Acts as the contact person within the project teams and for the business line in relation to data and functional aspects and document and validate BRD updates accordingly.
• Engage finance internal teams for relevant schemas and downstream reporting of finance processes.
• Ensure accounts, products, legal entities, and source systems are properly reflected in implementation.
• Track timelines and budget, report weekly updates, lead, and participate in OpCo/SteerCo meetings
• Ensure appropriate coverage to anticipate and enable resolution for any unforeseen or blocking issues with appropriate escalation.
• Identify opportunities to enhance and automate processes and agilely reprioritize and support other finance projects as they emerge.
• Ensures proper change management controls, rules, and responsibilities as required.
• Excellent PowerPoint and Excel skills to allow for analysis, summary, and presentation to working group and management as needed.

Minimum Required Qualifications:

• Qualified CFA / Finance University Degree.
• 7 to 10 years of work experience in the field of accounting and / or accounting systems (i.e. upstream to general ledger and downstream) and implementation in the financial services industry.
• Strong technical accounting background in the financial services industry (Ex: Corporate and Investment Bank, Prime and Hedge Fund Services, Investment Management, etc.)
• Experience must include business analysis and application testing.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Business analysis and project management skills including Microsoft Office, SQL preferred.
• Ability to understand complex financial products and system architectures, including accounting business processes, financial, and management reporting (IAS and US GAAP), month-end closing process, regulatory reporting, entity consolidations and multi-currency accounting.
• Experience working with accounting and reporting of complex financial products (Ex: Derivatives, Forex, Equities, Fixed Income, Treasury, Loan Syndication, Supply Chain, Trade Finance, etc.) with deep understanding of product lifecycles and associated accounting events.
• Detail-oriented approach with problem solving mind-set and ability to work independently.
• Ability to effectively challenge and apply professional skepticism with the goal of providing strategic solutions.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to explain complex issues clearly and concisely to audiences of varying technical or accounting levels.
• Ability to work effectively in geographically dispersed cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• CFA or experience in financial products preferred.
• Knowledge of accounting standards - IFRS and/or US GAAP are of interest.
• Experience working with IT in product implementations of financial systems
• Experience in Business Analysis (Accounting and Reporting) and Application Testing (accounting interpreter, sub ledger, general ledger, and reporting tools) in financial services industry.
• Fluency in one of more of these languages preferred: French, Spanish and/or Portuguese.
• Knowledge of emerging solutions and analytic tools preferred, e.g., robotics, Alteryx, BI, AI etc.