Advice for an experienced BA new to the investments and financial sector

DezUk · 13 Jun 2018 at 11:57

I am hoping guys on this sub reddit can help me out. I have recently started a BA role working with a large global pensions/investments company. I am sub contracted out to the company and have been dropped in at the deep end on a new integration project. We are integration a bank’s investment portal with our own and rebranding their customer portal page etc.

I am having a few problems adjusting to the new role though and was looking for some advice. I am totally new to the financial sector and have zero experience of working in this area. In the past I have worked on SAAS HR solutions and mobile apps where I was able to buddy up and have a mentor to get into the role over a period of a few month. In this new financial role I am finding myself picking up Epics and being expected to know all the jargon and tax rates and industry knowledge etc which I just have no clue about.

I am asking as many questions as I can but the project is so new that everyone is just franticly busy and has no time to sit me down an walk me through wtf is going on. I feel really stuck and not sure how to get up to speed fast so that I know what financial terminology is.

As well as the above I am fining that the way stories are written here are just based solely on acceptance criteria i.e. Given, When, Then and that’s it. I am used to writing user stories in Jira in a different format with a certain amount of acceptance criteria and the tester normally writes the AC's/Tests after having a 3 amigos on a user story.

I guess I am just asking for some advice from other BA's in the financial/investments sector to help me out and give me some direction as to where I can bone up and learn quickly before I am handed epics and expected to start writing user stories.

Cheers

ZombieFan · 13 Jun 2018 at 12:43

I'm not a BA or work in the financial sector but do work within a scrum team. Are you involved in the sprint retrospective ceremony at the end of the sprint? If so, use that as an oportunity to share your concerns and hopefully (if it's a decent team!) you'll get some support in future sprints. However, it sounds like you need a mentor to help you up the learning curve. Can your line manager help with this?

DezUk · 13 Jun 2018 at 13:15

The team I am part have been very supportive, the project is so new that they are still designing the workflow and the sprints, sprint planning and retros. I need to just keep asking questions and find out what my main priorities are. Nobody seems to have the time to sit down and go through how the systems hang together. I do have a mentor type guy but he is always so busy that he is never at his desk but when I have spoken with him has been very supportive.

I guess my main question was how to get up to speed with finacial sector and what it all means, if there are any online resources to get up to speed.

Nutty_Death · 15 Jun 2018 at 07:26

What's the purpose of your role ? and what do you think the expectations on what you would do is/was when you were hired?

Presumably there's a PO within the team who should be a source for a lot of product/market/customer information. If not are you expected to be a proxy for an absent PO?

Starting from the Epics, which are hopefully along the lines of a problem statement. Do they define who the customer is? As a... I want... So that...
If they do could you go speak with them or a proxy to them to find out what their requirements are?

To a degree, if you're defining user requirements then these can be reasonably agnostic of jargon, as a lot of the jargon comes in the solution which arguably shouldn't be defined in the story.

Anyway, i'd recommend talking with your Product Owner and Scrum Master/Agile coach in the first instance.

dowie · 17 Jun 2018 at 01:36

I'd assume that if they needed lots of domain knowledge then they'd not have hired you, a project like that doesn't sound like it requires anything too in-depth at least.

You mention sprints etc.. technically if you're using scrum then the team members ought to all be writing user stories, developing and testing - shouldn't need specific BAs and QA types.

I've previously worked as a BA in finance though it was banking related rather than pensions so I'm not sure on the specifics of what to recommend also in my case they really did need specific domain experience. I guess for example if you were working on say software within a bank related to fixed income, MM, FX etc.. and didn't have some previous relevant experience then for initial reading then something like the ACI dealing certificate training materials would give you a brief intro to various financial instruments. There will be similar reading material for pensions etc.. perhaps the syllabus trainee IFAs follow would be relevant to this (who is this investment portal aimed at exactly?) - they don't need to be graduates and the material is aimed at level 4 - equivalent to 1st year uni so should be pretty accessible. You should probably ask around within your company they're bound to have stuff - There must be new grads on the investment side who have access to this stuff (some of them might be following something like the IMC syllabus initially) - we had an entire intranet full of training material.

Then beyond the basics you might find useful things like books usually entitled "the handbook of..." or "a practitioners guide to" i.e. if you were say a BA working on some fixed income software you might start off with say "the handbook of fixed income securities" and "the complete practitioners guide to the bond market" etc.. and maybe books on market microstructure, pricing, financial mathematics etc...etc.. There will very likely be similar books on pensions etc.. aimed at practitioners.

I would definitely ask around your firm though, there ought to be training material kicking around somewhere.

OspreyO · 20 Jun 2018 at 12:02

Find someone (not even on the same project) a "super user" who lives and breathes finance. Have a list of questions, and see if they'll give you 20 mins of their time now and then to explain things to you.

Converge · 21 Jun 2018 at 11:40

OspreyO said:
Find someone (not even on the same project) a "super user" who lives and breathes finance. Have a list of questions, and see if they'll give you 20 mins of their time now and then to explain things to you.

This. It also works as you will have been seen as being proactive in getting up to speed, so that way if there are ever times when you're pulled up on your lack of knowledge (at this stage) you will have proof to show you are trying.
You'd be surprised how many people just bury their heads in the sand and play the clueless card.

As an experienced BA you know that a lot of the time you start with nothing and pick up information, and develop a good working knowledge. You've just gone for the more extreme end of it where you're in a completely new sector!
I generally work within Retail, but jump between Supply Chain, E-Commerce etc, but steer clear of Finance, Banking and Insurance as it's a whole new world there!

I wish you all the best, nothing worse than feeling out of your depth. I'm sure in a month or two you'll be spewing acronyms out like the best of them!

On the more positive side, you'll also be able to pick up loads of well-paid Finance BA contract roles relatively easily, as there are so many more of those contracts around than others i've found.
Just think of all the invaluable experience you're gaining