working world

Analyse this

Financial controllers are the brains of a bank

Story and photography by Suwitcha Chaiyong

Money always matters. It can bring either happiness or misery. And for banks, which are in the business of handling money, it is important to have someone with the brains to know how to deal with money and manage it. These people are known as financial controllers.

Database duties

"We collect databases including financial statements, revenue and client credits and then analyse them in detail. One of our tasks is to figure it out which products make a profit and how much and then compare them with other bank products," explained Pannaros Prungtangkij, assistant vice president of financial control at Citibank.

Pithayain Assavanig, another Citibank financial controller explained, "We have a lot of databases in our information system. People at the management level have no time to read them all. As the brains of the bank, we have to analyse these databases, anticipate prospective situations and suggest to the management team what they should do in the future."

Getting started

Their responsibilities sound complicated and significant, but Pannaros said she started this job without a background in finance or accounting. She said she learned her current duties through everyday work experience. "My first position at Citibank was secretary, but I had a great opportunity to help set up a branch in Hanoi, Vietnam," she explained. "From there, I operated systems and trained people."

But not everyone starts out that way. Pithayain earned a bachelor's degree in accounting and a master's degree in finance. "My father has worked in this field, so working with numbers has always been intriguing to me," he said. "My academic background helps me to understand my job faster.�

Communication skills a must

And don�t think that being a financial controller is a routine paper job. Good communication skills are a must because they have to deal with people at the management level at both local and international branches.

They also have to work with people from outside their own company. �We have to collect databases from many sources such as the Bank of Thailand," Pithayain said. "We sometimes want to compare our data with competitors, so we have to know how to deal with different kinds of people in order to receive data."

Financial controllers also must pay very close attention to details. Their results will be used by the management team to make decisions that can affect the entire company, so mistakes are not an option. "This is a job dealing with hundreds of numbers, but we can�t make mistakes," Pithayain said. "There is no room for mistakes at all.�

Vocabulary

misery (n): great suffering of the mind or body
revenue (n): the money that a government receives from taxes or that an organisation, etc. receives from its business
analyse (n): to examine the nature or structure of something in order to understand or explain it
anticipate (v): to see what might happen in the future and take action to prepare for it
prospective (adj): expected to happen soon
significant (adj): large or important enough to have an effect or to be noticed
operated (v): to be used or working; to use something or make it work
intriguing (adj): very interesting because of being unusual or not having an obvious answer
deal (v): to take appropriate action in a particular situation or according to who you are talking to, managing