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Professionals · code 2413

Financial analysts

AI can read every earnings report overnight. Deciding what to do about it is still an analyst.

AI could take a fair chunk of eight of the nine tasks, from forecasting and crunching financial data to writing up companies and markets. Only keeping up with the industry is mostly out of its reach.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Financial analysts conduct quantitative analyses of information affecting investment programmes of public or private institutions. Tasks include - (a) analysing financial information to produce forecasts of business, industry and economic conditions for use in making investment decisions; (b) maintaining knowledge and staying abreast of developments in the fields of industrial technology, business, finance and economic theory; (c) interpreting data affecting investment programmes such as price, yield, stability, future trends in investment risks and economic influences; (d) monitoring economic, industrial and corporate developments through analysis of information obtained from financial publications and services, investment banking firms, government agencies, trade publications, company sources and personal interviews; (e) recommending investments and investment timing to companies, investment firm staff or the investing public; (f) determining the prices at which securities should be syndicated and offered to the public; (g) preparing plans of action for investment based on financial analyses; (h) evaluating and comparing the relative quality of various securities in a given industry; (i) presenting oral and written reports on general economic trends, individual corporations and entire industries. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Bond analyst - Investment analyst - Securities consultant

  • middle office analyst
  • financial analyst

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

38 / 100

Highly exposed to AI

AI could do much of the everyday work. The job doesn’t disappear, but in five years you might not recognise it.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 4

421 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 9 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 61.8 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 61.8 = 38.2.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 4”: The ILO’s highest group: nearly every task is affected.

This job rates 7.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Financial analysts 38

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Research and monitoring news.
  • Forecasts and models.
  • Written reports.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Investment judgement.
  • Explaining views to clients and committees.
  • Accountability for calls.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • AI research tools.
  • Checking AI-generated analysis.
  • Alternative data.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: High

69 could do without you

It could take over a lot of this job on its own. It could help with 77 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

8 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 10 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

8 How
hands-on
10 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs .

finger skill 22.4 · hand skill 5.3 · cramped spaces 3 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 68, against an average of 62. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 68

    Presenting oral and written reports on general economic trends, individual corporations, and entire industries.

    Medium
  2. 65

    Analysing financial information to produce forecasts of business, industry, and economic conditions for use in making investment decisions

    Medium
  3. 64

    Monitoring economic, industrial, and corporate developments through analysis of information obtained from financial publications and services, investment banking firms, government agencies, trade publications, company sources and personal interviews

    Medium
  4. 64

    Recommending investments and investment timing to companies, investment firm staff or the investing public

    Medium
  5. 64

    Determining the prices at which securities should be syndicated and offered to the public

    Medium
  6. 64

    Evaluating and comparing the relative quality of various securities in a given industry

    Medium
  7. 62

    Preparing plans of action for investment based on financial analyses

    Medium
  8. 62

    Interpreting data affecting investment programmes, such as price, yield, stability, future trends in investment risks and economic influences

    Medium
  9. 46

    Maintaining knowledge and staying abreast of developments in the fields of industrial technology, business, finance, and economic theory

    Low

9 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
77
AI does it for you
69

Sidekick wins, by 8 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2222

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.09% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

61
39

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 2 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should financial analysts be worried?

Short answer: expect big changes. Better to steer them than be steered by them.

Much of the job is exposed. Reports, forecasts, monitoring developments, investment recommendations, pricing securities, comparing them, action plans and interpreting data are all rated Medium; keeping up with the field is Low. AI does much of the reading and modelling, so judgement and accountability matter more.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 62. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →