Top 12 Banking Analyst Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the competitive world of finance, standing out as a banking analyst takes a mix of sharp analysis, smart tooling, and the instincts to spot what matters before everyone else. Below, you’ll find the top 12 skills to highlight on your resume—practical, current, and geared to how banks actually work today.
Banking Analyst Skills
1. Excel
Excel is the analyst’s daily workbench—data wrangling, financial modeling, dashboards, and ad hoc analysis, all in one place.
Why It's Important
Excel moves fast with you. It supports robust models, quick testing, and clean reporting, helping you translate messy inputs into decisions the business can act on.
How to Improve Excel Skills
Level up by going beyond basics and into tools that compound your speed and accuracy.
Modern formulas: Master XLOOKUP, dynamic arrays (FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE), and core functions (INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS). Use LET and LAMBDA to simplify complex logic.
PivotTables and Power Pivot: Summarize huge datasets, build measures, and model relationships for repeatable analysis.
Power Query: Automate data imports and transformations. No more manual cleanup marathons.
Dashboards: Design with clear visuals, slicers, and linked charts. Keep it readable. Keep it fast.
Automation: Use macros/VBA for repetitive tasks. For web-based workflows, explore Office Scripts.
Quality and speed: Data validation, conditional formatting for flags, and ruthless keyboard shortcut fluency.
Build models that are auditable, consistent, and labeled. Future you—and your reviewers—will thank you.
How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume
2. SQL
SQL is the language of relational data. You’ll query, join, filter, and reshape large transaction and customer datasets with precision.
Why It's Important
Banks run on databases. SQL lets you extract the signal from sprawling tables quickly and reliably, feeding models, dashboards, and regulatory reports.
How to Improve SQL Skills
Core fluency: Get crisp with joins, subqueries, CTEs, window functions, and aggregations.
Performance: Read execution plans, index effectively, and think in sets. Avoid row-by-row traps.
Data design: Understand normalization, keys, and constraints so your queries align with the schema.
Security and governance: Practice least-privilege access, parameterized queries, and careful handling of sensitive data.
Breadth: Get comfortable across engines (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle) and nuances in syntax.
Reusability: Modularize with views, stored procedures, and consistent naming. Document assumptions.
Measure twice, run once—tight queries save hours when data volumes spike.
How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume
3. Python
Python makes heavy data work feel light—cleaning, modeling, automation, and reproducible analytics at scale.
Why It's Important
With powerful libraries for data analysis and machine learning, Python turns unwieldy datasets into forecasts, risk models, and streamlined workflows.
How to Improve Python Skills
Data stack: Get fluent with pandas, NumPy, and statsmodels for time series and econometrics; reach for scikit-learn when you need predictive power.
Writing clean code: Use functions, type hints, and tests. Log as you go. Keep notebooks tidy and shareable.
Performance: Vectorize operations, profile bottlenecks, and handle memory carefully with large frames.
Automation: Build repeatable pipelines for ETL, reporting, and model refreshes.
Finance specifics: Handle business calendars, risk metrics, scenario analysis, and tick/price data quirks.
Reproducibility: Pin environments, version control your work, and document assumptions.
Small scripts become big force multipliers when they remove manual steps across teams.
How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume
4. Tableau
Tableau turns rows into stories—interactive dashboards that surface patterns, trends, and outliers at a glance.
Why It's Important
Quick, intuitive visuals cut through noise and align stakeholders. The right view can move a meeting.
How to Improve Tableau Skills
Data modeling: Build star schemas where possible. Choose relationships vs. joins intentionally.
Performance: Use extracts when needed, prune fields, and monitor the performance recorder.
Calculations: Practice LOD expressions, table calcs, and parameters for flexible analysis.
Design: Keep typography, spacing, and color purposeful. Use actions and tooltips to guide exploration.
Governance: Standardize data sources, naming, and permissions. Refresh data on a sensible schedule.
Banking context: Frame dashboards around capital, credit, liquidity, revenue, and risk KPIs. Less fluff, more signal.
Build for speed, clarity, and the questions you know leadership will ask.
How to Display Tableau Skills on Your Resume
5. SAS
SAS delivers high-grade statistical analysis, data management, and governance—comfortably at enterprise scale.
Why It's Important
In regulated environments, SAS is a mainstay for credit risk, stress testing, AML, and model documentation, backed by robust auditability.
How to Improve SAS Skills
Foundations: Strengthen Base SAS, PROC SQL, and data step programming. Readable, well-structured code wins.
Statistics toolkit: Use PROC REG, LOGISTIC, GLM, and survival/time-series procedures where appropriate.
Macros and automation: Parameterize workflows, generate reports via ODS, and standardize recurring jobs.
Performance: Index large tables, minimize passes over data, and streamline joins.
Governance: Build in logging, versioning, and controls to meet model risk management standards.
Reliability and traceability are as important as results.
How to Display SAS Skills on Your Resume
6. Bloomberg Terminal
A window into the market’s bloodstream—real-time pricing, news, analytics, and deep reference data.
Why It's Important
Fast access to credible data and analytics shapes valuations, comps, and quick-turn research. It keeps your market pulse steady.
How to Improve Bloomberg Terminal Skills
Command fluency: Learn core functions (DES, FA, GP, WEI, RV, SPLC) and keyboard shortcuts. Speed compounds.
BQL and Excel add-in: Pull consistent datasets programmatically and refresh models without manual exports.
Customization: Build monitors, set alerts, and curate news filters tailored to your coverage.
Discovery: Use HELP and function-specific guidance to uncover deeper analytics.
Workflow hygiene: Name workspaces, organize screens, and document function sets for repeatability.
Make the terminal serve your process, not the other way around.
How to Display Bloomberg Terminal Skills on Your Resume
7. Financial Modeling
Translating business drivers into numbers—three statements linked cleanly, forecast logic that stands up to scrutiny, and valuation that explains itself.
Why It's Important
Good models sharpen decisions: pricing, risk, capital allocation, M&A, strategy. They turn uncertainty into ranges and scenarios.
How to Improve Financial Modeling Skills
Three-statement mastery: Drivers lead; financials follow. Keep ties consistent and auditable.
Valuation: Nail DCF mechanics, trading and transaction comps, and sensitivity/simulation.
Structure: One calculation per cell, clear labeling, color conventions, and built-in error checks.
Scenarios: Switch assumptions with control panels; track cases without duplication.
Presentation: Condense to crisp outputs—bridges, waterfalls, and KPIs that decision-makers can parse quickly.
Tools: Excel first, but be aware of specialized platforms (e.g., Workday Adaptive Planning) when complexity grows.
Models are living documents—maintain them like products, not snapshots.
How to Display Financial Modeling Skills on Your Resume
8. VBA
VBA powers automation inside Office, especially Excel—batch tasks, custom functions, repeatable workflows.
Why It's Important
When manual steps vanish, accuracy rises and cycles shrink. VBA glues data sources, models, and reports together.
How to Improve VBA Skills
Core patterns: Loops, conditions, arrays, collections, and class modules for tidy, modular code.
Performance: Turn off screen updating, use arrays for bulk reads/writes, and minimize worksheet calls.
Error handling: Centralize handlers, log failures, and fail gracefully with clear messages.
Data access: Pull from databases and CSVs reliably; validate inputs before processing.
UDFs and automation: Build user-defined functions and scheduled routines that cut recurring work to minutes.
Security: Protect code, restrict macros where necessary, and respect data sensitivity.
When Excel is home base, VBA is the fast lane.
How to Display VBA Skills on Your Resume
9. R
R is a powerhouse for statistics, time series, and elegant visuals—ideal for risk, forecasting, and exploratory analysis.
Why It's Important
Banking leans on rigorous inference. R’s ecosystem delivers depth for econometrics and clear storytelling with data.
How to Improve R Skills
Data fluency: Tidyverse and data.table for fast wrangling; lubridate for dates that behave.
Modeling: GLMs, time-series frameworks, and resampling methods tuned to financial data quirks.
Visualization: Build layered, legible charts that reveal structure without clutter.
Reproducibility: R Markdown for reports, parameterized notebooks, and environment management (e.g., renv).
Workflow: Write functions, test essentials, and profile slow code. Document as you iterate.
Great R work reads like a narrative—data, method, result—tight and defensible.
How to Display R Skills on Your Resume
10. Power BI
Power BI turns disparate sources into a governed, shareable analytics layer—fast to build, easy to consume.
Why It's Important
It scales across teams, enforces a single source of truth, and brings interactive analysis to business users without tunnel-building.
How to Improve Power BI Skills
Model design: Aim for a star schema. Keep relationships clean and cardinality sane.
Power Query: Build robust, stepwise transformations. Parameterize where useful.
DAX: Write measures with variables, control filter context, and avoid row context pitfalls.
Performance: Use the Performance Analyzer, reduce column cardinality, and prefer measures over calculated columns.
Security and lifecycle: Implement row-level security, incremental refresh, and thoughtful deployment pipelines.
Experience: Bookmarks, drill-through, and field parameters for flexible exploration.
A good model beats a flashy visual every time.
How to Display Power BI Skills on Your Resume
11. MATLAB
MATLAB excels at numerical methods, optimization, and simulation—useful for risk, pricing, and algorithm development.
Why It's Important
When precision and matrix-heavy math matter, MATLAB’s toolboxes and visualization options deliver stable, reproducible results.
How to Improve MATLAB Skills
Vectorization first: Replace loops with array operations for speed and clarity.
Toolboxes: Lean on Financial, Econometrics, and Risk Management toolboxes where they fit.
Reusable code: Write functions, organize files, and keep parameters configurable.
Visualization: Build clear plots with annotations that explain the “why,” not just the “what.”
Scale: Use parallel computing and tall arrays when data gets chunky.
Integration: Exchange data cleanly with Python, CSVs, and databases to slot MATLAB into broader workflows.
Prototype, verify, document—then hand off with confidence.
How to Display MATLAB Skills on Your Resume
12. QuickBooks
QuickBooks is accounting software geared to small and midsize businesses—useful when analyzing client financials, covenant compliance, or loan packages sourced from SMBs.
Why It's Important
While not central to capital markets work, familiarity helps you parse client statements quickly, reconcile records, and standardize inputs for credit analysis.
How to Improve QuickBooks Skills
Chart of accounts discipline: Clean, consistent categories make downstream analysis far easier.
Bank feeds and rules: Automate categorization, then reconcile like clockwork.
Custom reports: Build P&L, cash flow, AR/AP aging, and cohort views tailored to underwriting needs.
Controls: Lock periods, enforce user roles, and monitor the audit trail for accuracy.
Data hygiene: Standardize vendors, classes, and items; archive what’s stale; back up often.
Use it to translate accounting entries into the metrics your credit and portfolio teams care about.
How to Display QuickBooks Skills on Your Resume
