Entry-Level Finance Roles A Quick Glance

ADVISORY (specifically, Financial Advisory)

Overview: In broad terms, advisory is the practice of offering information and advice to manage risks. It’s often a long-term relationship that helps a business to proactively prepare for change and uncertainty. Some of the disciplines that fall under financial advisory include:

▪ Transaction services: Includes a range of advisory services tackling questions related to acquisitions, mergers, and divestiture. May involve in due diligence, target screening, valuations, postmerger support and other services.

▪ Accounting Advisory: Making accounting processes more efficient, managing compliance, streamlining flow of financial reporting and improving its quality.

▪ Risk Management: Assessing relevant financial risks and establishing processes and governance structure to control and mitigate them. Covers compliance, IT risk and developing accurate warning systems.

▪ Forensics & Litigation: Range of services, including forensic accounting, auditing, anti-trust and money laundering advice to help clients win disputes and litigation.

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for advisory roles: Baker Tilly | BDO | CBIZ | Deloitte | EY | FTI Consulting | Grant Thornton | KPMG | Marcum LLP | PwC | RSM

Overview: Business Analysts help guide businesses in improving processes, products, services and software through data analysis. They identify the most impactful ways for data and analytics to drive decision making and may support both project-based work and recurring tasks. These roles are available across all industries and there are many variations of this general role including allocation analysts, business intelligence analysts, customer experience analysts, data analysts, financial analysts, operations analysts, pricing analysts, product analysts, quantitative analysts, risk analysts, sales analysts, supply chain analysts and system analysts.

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for business analyst roles: AllianceBernstein | BJ’s Wholesale | Bose | Boston Children’s Hospital | Capital One | Dell | DraftKings | Epsilon | Fidelity | FM Global | John Hancock | JP Morgan Chase & Co. | Liberty Mutual | MathWorks | McKinsey & Company | Philips Healthcare | Rapid7 | State Street | TD Bank | TJX Companies | Travelers | Triumvirate Environmental | Tufts Health Plan | Walmart | Wayfair

Overview: In the simplest terms, business development can be summarized as the ideas, initiatives, and activities that help make a business better. This includes increasing revenues, growth in terms of business expansion, increasing profitability by building strategic partnerships, and making strategic business decisions. The duties of a business development rep can vary tremendously, but those with strong communication & interpersonal skills, collaboration skills, project management skills, and analytical skills are poised to success in this type of role.

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for business development rep roles: Amazon | Blackstone | Boston Children’s Hospital | Fidelity | Hubspot | Mastercard | National Grid | Oracle | Rapid7 | Point72 | PTC | S&P Global | SLC Management | State Street | Toast | Wayfair | Wolf & Company |

Overview: Commercial banking provides clients with credit products such as term loans, revolving lines of credit, cash management services, and other fixed income products. An undergrad typically starts as a credit analyst and is tasked with analyzing a client’s financial statements, competitive position, industry, and management team. The credit analyst prepares an “application for credit” that determines the structure and pricing of a financing request. As a credit analyst, you deliver financial advice and solutions that are tailored to your clients’ needs, such as growing their business, buying new equipment, funding working capital, and day-to-day banking.

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for commercial banking roles: Berkshire Bank | Brookline Bank | Cambridge Savings Bank | Citi | Citizens Bank | East Boston Savings Bank | Eastern Bank | HSBC | M&T Bank | Middlesex Savings Bank | Rockland Trust | Salem Five Bank | Santander Bank | Silicon Valley Bank | TD Bank | Wells Fargo

Overview: There are several different areas of specialization in commercial real estate, including:

▪ Acquisitions: Acquisitions professionals are generally responsible for helping source, analyze, perform due diligence on, and negotiate the purchase of new equity investments for their real estate investment firms. It’s important to note that acquisitions professionals generally pursue existing properties (either stabilized or unstabilized properties) whereas real estate development professionals pursue new build opportunities.

▪ Asset Management: Asset managers make important investment decisions, ensure clients’ investments don’t depreciate, and mitigate clients’ exposure to risk. Real estate portfolios may include different types of properties in a variety of regions and markets. Asset managers also hire key personnel, work with leasing agents, communicate with investors, and negotiate contracts.

▪ Brokerage: Brokers conduct business on behalf of a firm and represent a buyer or seller in a transaction. They can conduct business with corporations, institutional buyers and sellers, foreign and domestic businesses, as well as various other investment entities. A commercial broker will usually focus on a single type of property such as industrial, retail, office, lodging, or apartments.

▪ Development: Developers buy land, finance real estate deals, build or have builders build projects, create, imagine, control, and orchestrate the process of development from the beginning to end. Typically, developers purchase a tract of land, determine the marketing of the property, develop the building program and design, obtain the necessary public approval and financing, build the structures, and rent out, manage, and ultimately sell it.

▪ Investment: Institutional real estate investment refers to real estate investment at a large scale by an institution. The institution is usually a real estate investment trust (REIT), insurance company, or pension fund. Institutional investors employ their own brokers and analysts, among many other roles. An analyst can be responsible for monitoring markets, tax law, regional market changes, geographical economic trends, local and global market trends, as well as micro trends

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for commercial real estate roles: AEW Capital Management | Arbor Realty Trust | Boston Capital | Boston City Properties | CBRE | Cushman & Wakefield | Duff & Phelps | HFF | HIMCO | JLL |

Liberty Mutual Investments | Marcus Partners |

Newmark Knight Frank | TA Realty | Walker & Dunlop

Overview: Consulting is a big, one-size-fits-all term that includes virtually any form of advice-giving. Many people think first of management / strategy consulting, but there are many other types of consulting, including Financial Consulting, HR/Staffing Consulting, and IT Consulting. (Note that Financial Consulting and IT Consulting may also be referred to as “Advisory”).

Financial Consulting firms provide advice on:

▪ Capital budgeting, project valuation and financial information integrity

▪ Risk management, insurance engagements, financial control and compliance

▪ Global finance operations, tax and treasury optimization

▪ Corporate restructuring

HR / Staffing Consulting firms help clients to:

▪ Manage compensation and benefits programs

▪ Analyze staffing needs, advise firms on personnel policies and diversity issues

▪ Recruit, hire and train workers

IT Consulting firms help clients to:

▪ Design and implement IT systems or develop better IT practices

▪ Train staff members in IT areas such as hardware/software design setup

▪ Provide strategic advice on social media, search engine marketing and IT issues

Overview: A credit analyst is a financial professional who assesses the creditworthiness of securities, individuals, or companies. Credit analysts determine the likelihood that a borrower can repay their financial obligations by reviewing the borrower's financial and credit history and determining whether the state of the subject's financial health and the economic conditions are favorable to repayment. After evaluating the level of risk of an investment, the analyst will determine the interest rate and credit limit or loan terms for a borrower. Credit analysts are typically employed by commercial and investment banks, credit card issuing institutions, credit rating agencies, and investment companies.

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for credit analysis roles: BDC Capital | Capital One | Citizens | East West Bank | First Republic Bank | M&T Bank | MutualOne Bank | Moody’s Investor Services | Northern Bank | S&P Global | Santander Bank | STAG Industrial | TD Bank | U.S. Bank

Overview: Equity Research primarily means analyzing a company’s financials, performing ratio analysis, forecasting the financials in Excel (financial modeling) and exploring scenarios with an objective of making BUY/SELL investment recommendation.

Management / Strategy Consulting firms help to:

▪ Improve an organization’s structure, management, efficiency and profits

▪ Develop and recommend short-term and long-term strategies for their clients

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for consulting roles: Accenture | Aon | Bain & Company | Boston Consulting Group | CVS Health | Darling Consulting Group | Deloitte Consulting | FTI Consulting | Management Solutions | Massaro | McKinsey | Oracle | Peloton Consulting Group | Protiviti | PwC | RSM

Sell-side equity research analysts are typically part of an investment bank and focus on a universe of stocks within one or two industries in order to provide insightful investment ideas and recommendations:

▪ Directly to institutional investors;

▪ Directly to the investment bank’s salesforce and traders, who in turn communicate those ideas with institutional investors;

▪ To the finance community at large through financial data service providers such as Capital IQ, FactSet, Thomson and Bloomberg, who resell the data.

▪ Notable end users are investment banks M&A and advisory services groups, which use sell-side equity research to help forecast company performance in presentations and pitch books.

Sell side equity research analysts communicate formally through research reports and notes that place buy, sell and hold ratings on companies they cover as well as through less formal direct phone, email and inperson communication with institutional investors.

Buy-side equity research analysts, on the other hand, analyze companies in order to make an actual investment in line with their firm's investment strategy and portfolio. Also, unlike sell-side research, buy-side research is not published. Buy-side analysts work for a variety of investment firms:

▪ Mutual funds

▪ Hedge funds

▪ Private equity

▪ Other (insurance, endowment and pension funds)

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for equity research roles: Bank of America | Bloomberg | BMO Capital Markets | BNY Mellon | Canaccord

Genuity | Citi | Eaton Vance | Fidelity | Franklin

Templeton | Goldman Sachs | Invesco | Jefferies | JP Morgan | KeyBanc Capital Markets | Loomis, Sayles & Company | MFS Investment Management | Nomura | Piper Sandler | RBC Capital Markets | The Boston Company | UBS | Voya Investment Management |

Wellington Management

Overview: A financial advisor / planner is a professional who provides financial guidance to clients based on their needs and goals. Typically, they provide clients with financial products, services, planning or advice related to investing, retirement, insurance, mortgages, college savings, estate planning, taxes and more. There are several credentials that financial advisors can obtain, and the most common is the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation. An advisor must pass the CFP test, have an appropriate level of prior education, sign a code of ethics, and have several years of actual planning experience before obtaining the right to use the CFP designation.

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for financial advising / planning roles: Ameriprise | Baystate Financial | Charles Schwab | Concord Wealth Management | Edward Jones | Equitable Advisors | Fidelity | Financial Compass Group | | Janney

Montgomery Scott | LPL Financial | McAdam Financial | Merrill | Morgan Stanley | New York Life |

Northwestern Mutual | Raymond James | Wells Fargo Advisors | UBS

Overview: Being a financial analyst is one of the most popular career paths in finance. This is largely because analysts can work in a range of industries. A financial analyst is a professional who is responsible for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting financial data as well as preparing reports, models, presentations and recommendations for leaders of a business or clients. Analysts must be good with numbers, have a strong understanding of accounting, and be able to manage large data sets.

Because the role can be quite different depending on where an analyst works, the industry an analyst chooses to go into defines their day-to-day responsibilities. Overall, however, analysts play a significant part in providing decision-makers with the information they need to make informed decisions.

Firms that have hired Bentley students / alumni for financial analysis roles: Akamai Technologies |

American Express | athenahealth, Inc. | B. Riley

Financial | BAE Systems | Bose Corporation | CBS Corporation | DTCC | Epsilon | FedEx | General Dynamics | General Motors | Hologic | Lahey Health |

Mass General Brigham | National Grid | NBC Universal | Northwell Health | Nuance | Pegasystems | Raytheon

Technologies | Takeda Pharmaceuticals | Teradyne |

Thomson Reuters | Tiger Capital Group | Time Warner

TJX Companies | VMware