How Learning SAS Will Help Me in Investment Banking Career

SAS is a Statistical Analysis programming tool. Gaining proficiency in the SAS domain helps you make those complex statistical calculations. It is a desirable certification to get especially for risk-analysts in banks. A risk-analyst with an Investment Banking Career relies on SAS, for assessing investment risks that have the potential for default, foreclosure or termed bad loans. Such loans are poor risks and the banks have to ensure the borrowers pay the loan and interest in time.
An Investment Banking Career and SAS Certification involve a high degree of proficiency in mathematics, data engineering and a very good understanding of statistical analysis. You can do a career-oriented course at a reputed institute like Imarticus Learning for a credit-risk analyst. Normally the IB courses and working in IB do not use SAS extensively. They learn the languages and skills of an investment banker. However, if you plan to be an analyst in retail banking or risk-analyst in the investment banking division then SAS learning is a priority. Courses such as these also prepare you for measurable certification of technical skills. The Investment banking certification measures your skills in the services of an investment bank. Namely,

  • Acquisition and mergers.
  • Advice on buy-outs and acquisition of firms.
  • Trading in securities.
  • Corporate finance.
  • AMC.
  • Services involving Custodianship.
  • Restructuring of debts.
  • Capital market investments.
  • Other allied services.

Education:
The career progression in IB requires sound financial knowledge. A graduation degree is not mandatory though IB encourages disciplines like finance, economics, business administration, and mathematics which do give you an upper hand. Doing an Investment banking certification endorses and enhances your skill sets for the job and your resume. Certification also serves the purpose of being a measurable index of practical implementation skills in the basics of IB. The career progression ladder may also have an odd-ball who starts as an Intern, moves to an Associate role, and then upwards to Vice President, CFO, MD job roles etc.

Skills Required:
The Investment Banking Career field’s crucial skills are a mix of soft skills and technical skills. The basic attributes are

  • A graduate degree for Associate roles.
  • Financial and business modelling knowledge.
  • Conceptual knowledge of accounting and financial issues and solutions.
  • Adept at Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and Excel manipulation techniques, and MS Office and Word suites.
  • Ability to work extremely long working hours of 80 hours with hardly any holidays.
  • Being a team player and effective learner from feedback.
  • An eye for details and data organization.
  • Investment banking certification course.

Technical skills required:

Your degree in science, social sciences, psychology, pharmacy and such could be short of crucial subjects like mathematics, machine learning, algorithms, and computer engineering techniques which form the pillars of data science. But, you do have a huge advantage in your own domain. And that is a plus when you understand where and how to apply the algorithms to your field.

If you are a developer in the IB domain then most HR recruiters want to see the languages of the C suite like C , C#, R, Python, Java, and Matlab on your list of technical skills. In other words, an Investment Banking Career need not be just as a financial analyst, you could also be a BA, developer or full-stack developer and your technical skills required will depend on the job role.

SAS is used for financial reporting and is a good tool for the retail bankers, the equities market specialists, corporate bankers, in mergers and acquisitions and literally anywhere where the probability theory and the theory of regression modelling applies. Most legacy systems of banks use the C language which is not so common today. But, banks are transitioning to more modern and effective infrastructure to stay afloat and profitable amid rapid changes in AI, ML, data sciences and the sheer volumes of data generated.

Conclusion:
SAS is not a technical requirement for an IB career. However, SAS is a fantastic tool wherever probability, risk-analysis and statistical analysis applications are present. In parting, the Investment Banking Career does fetch some fantastic pay-packages. The demand for them is high. If you want to be in IB then do the apt course at Imarticus Learning who even offer assured placements to the deserving trained aspirants in this hallowed field of IB.

Also Read: Investment Banking Career Path

Pokémon Go – Why is it so popular?

Pokémon was originally an animation show by The Pokémon Company and was aired in the year the year 1995. It began as a game on the ‘Gameboy’ and was soon turned into an animated franchise by the combined efforts of Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak. Since day 1, this show had garnered immense popularity, and at the height of its fame, had scores of teenagers as its viewers.
Recently, Nintendo launched Pokémon Go as a mobile application, thus bringing together a clever marketing ploy, a health benefiting agenda and made optimum use of the nostalgia attached to the franchise.
pokemon-go-office
Pokémon Go is fast becoming the most sought after application today. Here is some fascinating data we have found so far:

  • In U.S.A alone there have been more than 60% of people downloading the app.
  • This proves that more than 3% of Android users in USA are using this application on a daily basis, nearing the usage of Twitter.
  • People have no problem with the data usage of this app, which is believed to be a lot owing to the graphics. Surprisingly this is not the case, as data analytic experts claim it does even use data as much as Google Maps.
  • Pokémon Go has more than 10 million users already and the number is definitely bound to increase!
  • This application has achieved the most amount of data retention, in just weeks of its launch and has clearly stood out at the standard time a user takes to dislike an app; which in this case, is almost negligible.
  • The fact that there are a number of data analytics in terms of the audience targeted, the age groups, the trends and the fact that this app is literally bringing people out of their houses.
  • Pokémon Go seems to have taken over the world with being downloaded in countries where the app hasn’t even been officially released yet. Appkmirror which a secondary site to download the app has had almost 4 million visits since the launch.

If the stats are to be believed, then Pokémon Go certainly seems to be taking over the world. This presents an incredible opportunity to various firms to invest in this application, as well as to generate more sales, through luring customers to their outlets.

Apart from the primary glitches like the server rundowns, people getting hurt, trespassing or disrespecting a solemn site, this application still seems to be going strong.
Data Analytics will play a major role in further development of the app, thus adding more impetus to career prospects of a Data Scientist.
Imarticus Learning is a reputed education institute, providing a host of courses in the renowned field of Data Analytics and the tools used here, like SAS, R programming, Hadoop and others.


Written by Imarticus Team