Finance Analyst

A finance analyst pulls together an organisation's financial numbers — sales, costs, budgets, forecasts — and turns them into something managers can act on. The work usually sits in the finance team of a company (rather than in a bank), supporting departments like operations, marketing or a particular product line, and answering questions such as why costs went up last month or whether next year's budget is realistic. Most of the job is building and checking spreadsheets or reports, then explaining what they show to people who are not accountants.

Starting salary: £25k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 21 open now
Main way in: Finance graduate schemes at large companies
They usually ask for: A degree in almost any subject is acceptable at many employers

Approximate graduate salary

Typically somewhere around £25,000–35,000 to start, though this varies a lot. Large graduate schemes and London employers tend to sit at or above the top of that range, while smaller regional employers and parts of the public and charity sectors often start lower. Pay usually rises noticeably once you qualify, and some employers pay study-related increments as you pass exams.

What you'd actually do

Updating monthly reporting packs: pulling actual results out of the finance system, comparing them against budget or forecast, and writing short commentary explaining the differences (this is usually called 'variance analysis')
Chasing people around the business for information — asking a department head why their spend jumped, or whether a planned project has slipped, so the numbers reflect reality rather than guesswork
Building and maintaining spreadsheet models, often large ones, for forecasts, pricing, headcount planning or business cases
Working to a tight month-end timetable — the first week or so after each month closes is typically the busiest, with hard internal deadlines

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Preparing slides or one-page summaries for a management meeting, and sometimes presenting them or sitting in while a more senior colleague does
Answering ad hoc questions: 'what would it cost to open another site?', 'is this customer actually profitable?' — these arrive with little notice and often matter more than the routine reporting
Cleaning and reconciling data, including finding out why two systems disagree about the same number — this takes up far more time than most people expect

How graduates get in

Finance graduate schemes at large companies — common, and usually rotational (you move around treasury, financial reporting, commercial finance and so on) with a professional accountancy qualification funded alongside. These are competitive and recruit early in the academic year.
Direct entry as a graduate finance analyst or finance assistant at mid-sized companies — very common and often overlooked. These roles are advertised year-round, may not come with a training contract, and are a perfectly normal way in.
Placement year or summer internship in a finance function, converted into a graduate offer — one of the strongest routes, because the employer already knows you can handle month-end.
Moving across from audit or accountancy practice after qualifying (or part-qualifying) as an ACA — common, but this is a route in a couple of years after graduation rather than straight from university.

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Starting in a transactional finance role (accounts payable, credit control, billing) and moving sideways into analysis — slower, but realistic, especially if the employer supports study for AAT or CIMA.
Public sector and NHS finance graduate schemes — a distinct route with their own application cycles, typically leading to a CIPFA or CIMA qualification.

What employers ask for

A degree in almost any subject is acceptable at many employers, though accounting, finance, economics, maths and business are the most common. Numerate non-finance degrees are widely accepted; some employers explicitly welcome any discipline provided you can show comfort with numbers.
A 2:1 is the usual stated bar on graduate schemes, and some also set a UCAS points or GCSE maths requirement. Direct-entry roles at smaller employers are often more flexible and will take a 2:2 with relevant experience.
Willingness to study for a professional accountancy qualification — usually ACCA, CIMA or ACA, sometimes CIPFA in the public sector. CIMA is especially common for management-accounting and commercial-finance roles. Whether the employer pays for this and gives study leave varies enormously, so check before accepting an offer.
Demonstrable Excel ability. Employers vary in how they test it — some set an online spreadsheet exercise, some just ask about it at interview — but it is genuinely assessed rather than assumed.

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Some relevant experience helps a lot: a placement year, a finance internship, treasurer of a society, or part-time work involving reconciling takings or stock. For direct-entry roles this often matters more than the degree subject.
A few employers now ask for familiarity with SQL, Power BI or Tableau. This is far from universal but is becoming more common in larger, data-heavy organisations.

Skills that matter

Excel beyond the basics

You will live in spreadsheets — lookups, pivot tables, building a model someone else can follow and audit — and slow, error-prone Excel work shows up immediately.

Explaining numbers to non-finance people

A budget holder in operations does not want a variance table; they want one sentence on what went wrong and what to do about it, and the analyst who can write that sentence gets noticed.

Attention to detail with a sense of proportion

Figures that go to senior management must be right, but you also have to know when a small discrepancy is not worth another two hours at 7pm on a month-end deadline.

Curiosity about how the business actually makes money

Good analysis comes from understanding what sits behind the number — which contracts, which sites, which customers — not from the ledger alone.

Working to fixed deadlines under pressure

Month-end and year-end do not move, and the reporting cycle repeats whether or not the data arrives cleanly.

Politely extracting information from busy colleagues

Much of the input you need sits with people who have no obligation to prioritise your email, so following up without irritating them is a real and underrated skill.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Graduate or junior finance analyst: focused on producing reports accurately and on time, usually with your work reviewed by someone more senior, while studying for a professional qualification.
Finance analyst / management accountant: you own a set of reports or a part of the business, write your own commentary and start being asked for your opinion rather than just your spreadsheet. Qualifying (ACCA, CIMA, ACA or CIPFA) typically takes around three years of study alongside work, though people take longer and that is normal.
Senior finance analyst or finance business partner: attached to a specific department or division, sitting in their meetings, challenging their plans and effectively acting as their in-house finance adviser. This is where the job becomes much more about influence than reporting.
Finance manager or head of financial planning and analysis (FP&A): managing a small team, owning the budgeting and forecasting cycle for a business unit.
Beyond that, finance director or CFO in smaller organisations, or divisional finance leadership in large ones. Timelines vary very widely — the qualification timetable is fairly conventional, but everything after it depends on the employer's size, turnover and how many layers there are to climb. Lateral moves into corporate development, strategy, procurement or commercial roles are also common and not a step backwards.

What people get wrong

“It's an investment banking or City job.”

'Finance analyst' in most UK adverts means internal corporate finance — a manufacturer, retailer, charity, NHS trust or software company analysing its own performance. The hours, culture and pay are generally quite different from front-office banking, and the comparable banking title is usually 'investment banking analyst' or 'equity research analyst'.

“You need an accounting or finance degree.”

Many finance analysts studied something unrelated. Professional accountancy bodies are set up to train graduates from any discipline, and employers often care more about numeracy, Excel and commercial curiosity than your degree title.

“It's a solitary job staring at spreadsheets.”

A surprising share of the week is spent talking to people outside finance — chasing explanations, challenging assumptions and presenting findings. Analysts who cannot hold their own in a conversation with an operations manager tend to stall, however strong their modelling is.

“Producing the report is the job.”

The report is the raw material. What gets you promoted is noticing the thing in it that nobody asked about — a contract quietly losing money, a forecast that cannot possibly be met — and raising it.

Where this varies

The title covers quite different jobs. In a large corporate, a finance analyst may be narrowly specialised — one product line, one region — within a big FP&A team, with a formal graduate scheme and funded study. In a small or mid-sized company, the same title can mean doing everything from the management accounts to VAT returns to helping with payroll, with much less structure but broader experience faster. Sector matters too: NHS and local government finance has its own qualification route (CIPFA) and its own rhythms around the public funding year; financial services firms blur the line between finance analysis and regulatory reporting; fast-growing tech companies often expect SQL and dashboard tools alongside Excel. Whether you get a funded qualification, study leave and exam resit support is one of the biggest practical differences between otherwise similar-looking offers, and it is worth asking about directly.

See all 21 live Finance Analyst jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.