Top 3 Skills Needed for Investment Banking

Investopedia lists discipline, entrepreneurial, and relationship-builder as among top five skills for investment banking. In my opinion these along with persistence and excellent communication are essential for bankers. What say you?

investment banking skills needed for analysts

When talking about investment banking, many prospective bankers are highly focused on the needed technical skills such as accounting, valuation, and financial modeling. While these skills are important - in reality soft skills are what make most bankers successful. Investment banking is a very time intensive and stressful job that wears out most people. Those are that able to succeed must have endurance in addition to a commitment to producing perfect deliverables for clients.

Some of the key necessary skills include:

  • Enthusiasm
  • Grit
  • Attention to Detail
  • Endurance
  • Positive Attitude
  • Ability to Learn Quickly
  • Tenacity

Investment Banker Skills Required for Success

Of these, the ability to learn quickly is extremely important. as analysts are often thrown into the fire after a short training period. The most successful analysts will be the ones that are able to figure out the tasks needed and complete them very well without having to ask an endless stream of questions. Additionally, this is important as analysts shouldn't make the same mistake twice.

Along these same lines - attention to detail is critical as the work submitted by analysts (both models and ppts) will go to boards of directors and can affect billion dollar deals.

The necessity of endurance, grit, tenacity, and a positive attitude all exist around the knowledge that investment banking has brutal hours and often mindless work. The most respected analysts are the ones that can keep their head down, put on a smile, and put in the work without any attitude.

User @AndyLouis", an industry COO, shared a good alternative list of the skills needed:

AndyLouis - Industry COO:
  • Prioritization & efficiency
  • Attention to detail & consistency
  • Discipline & work ethic
  • Dependable
  • Easy to get along with / friendly

You can learn more about the skills needed to be an investment banker with the below video.

Outside of these soft skills, our users emphasized that proficiency with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint is critical as you will spend almost all of your time working with these programs.

You can learn more about excel and modeling with the Wall Street Prep Financial Modeling Course.

Read More About Investment Banking on WSO

Preparing for Investment Banking Interviews?

The WSO investment banking interview course is designed by countless professionals with real world experience, tailored to people aspiring to break into the industry. This guide will help you learn how to answer these questions and many, many more.

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Depends on your role (analyst, associate, MD, etc)

At the junior level I would say 1) stamina 2) ability to learn quickly and 3) independent (don't need to hold your hand, great to have analysts that are proactive and don't have to be told what to do all the time)

 

Come on dude...are you serious? You answered your own questions...its just a set of skills bankers develop and perfect while on the job.. These skill are ussually transferable to other jobs in finance yet are used extensively in bankig...they include all the ones you listed above (extensive modelling/bieng able to value a business, writing memos, perform due dilligence, interact with senior level/c-level executives, etc..

Its no different than a kid going to basketball camp for 3 months and developing new jumper or defense techniques...that he wouldnt have been able to learn elsewhere

 

(i dont work in finance), my guess from all that i've read on WSO and learned from Patrick, and I think these apply to many jobs

in no order:

-prioritization & efficiency -attention to detail & consistency -discipline & work ethic -dependable -easy to get along with / friendly

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Truly, banking is a waste of time. You pigeon whole yourself into a "prestigious" career path with loads of money, but the opportunity cost is extremely high. Sure you are great at modeling and what not, but the world passes you by.

I mean if you're the type of person who is just interested in looking at numbers all day, sure IB is great, but if you want to be a well-rounded person who makes loads of $$$, I think IB will seriously damped your career outlook.

Let me hear you say, this shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
 

A "waste of time"? Doesn't every path eventually pigeon hole you? And every path is a job at the day, so if it does lead to a lot of money then I wouldn't call it a waste of time, but a way to monetize your time/effort.

 

You should be able to think independently and dynamically enough that you wouldn't even begin to think about the top three skills, at least at the MM level. It's not about checking off boxes on a list. BI and standardized testing are ruining our youth.

Also, NEVER take career advice from Investopedia.

Thanks, let me know if you ever need an introduction in the industry.
 

Entrepreneurial? Relationship-builder?

Lol what kind of crap is that? As a banker you need to be able to just shut the fck up and do what your MD says. And until you are at least 10 year into the job you will never be allowed to even really speak to clients so the whole relationshi-building is also a joke.

What you need is discipline to not just quit when you get another shitty task at 01.00am and an ability to take a lot of crap. You also need to not value your own time too much cause I can assure you your bosses won't either.

 

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