Principal Business Insights Analyst

Principal Business Analyst

Citizens' Consumer Deposits team is seeking a Principal Business Analyst who combines strategic thinking with strong analytical skills to tackle some of the company's most critical challenges. This role is ideal for someone passionate about leveraging data to drive actionable insights, influence decision-making, and shape innovative customer experiences. The role also brings a strong emphasis on payments analytics and business case development to support growth, profitability, and customer engagement across deposit and payment products.

Key Responsibilities

Data Analysis & Insights

• Develop deep expertise in customer, business, and payments data (e.g., transaction behavior, card usage, digital payments, ACH/wire activity), as well as underlying processes, to uncover opportunities and inform strategic decisions.

• Use data to identify business challenges and opportunities through advanced analytics, leading the development of strategic and tactical recommendations.

• Drive analyses & targeted insights to inform the design and development of new customer experiences, including payments journeys, digital wallet adoption, and transaction engagement strategies.

• Accelerate insights delivery by automating routine analytical processes for faster responses to foundational business questions.

• Apply payments analytics to understand spend patterns, customer segmentation, payment channel preferences, and revenue drivers (interchange, fees, and balances).

Performance Measurement & Optimization

• Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress, highlight opportunities, and influence decision-making across teams, including payments KPIs such as transaction volume, activation, spend, retention, and unit economics.

• Shape test-and-learn agendas by recommending optimal test designs, measurement strategies, and optimization approaches.

• Evaluate performance of payments initiatives, pricing strategies, and customer engagement programs to drive continuous optimization.

Strategy & Business Planning

• Build robust, data-driven business cases for new initiatives, articulating potential benefits, risks, and prioritization considerations, including ROI modeling, scenario analysis, and sensitivity testing.

• Develop business cases for payments-related investments (e.g., new capabilities, partnerships, pricing strategies, and customer incentives) grounded in financial and operational impact.

• Partner with Finance and Product teams to align on assumptions, forecasts, and value realization for strategic initiatives.

• Manage competing priorities across projects and programs, balancing short-term deliverables with long-term objectives.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Communication

• Partner across departments—including Data, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Payments, and Modeling—to improve quality, volume, service, and profitability.

• Act as a bridge between payments, deposits, and broader consumer banking teams to ensure alignment on strategy and execution.

• Communicate insights effectively, translating complex analyses into clear, compelling stories tailored to diverse audiences, including executive leadership.

• Champion Agile principles to support Citizens' operating model.

Qualifications & Preferred Skills

• Bachelor's degree (Master's or MBA preferred) in Business or a quantitative field such as Finance, Economics, Statistics, Analytics, Data Science, Math, Engineering, or Physical Sciences

• 3+ years of experience in business analysis, including turning ambiguous business problems and raw data into useful insights by applying critical thinking and data programming skills

• Proficient in SQL;
Python experience strongly preferred

• A solid understanding of statistical models and machine learning methods and algorithms

• Experience with payments data (card, ACH, wire, digital wallets) and a strong understanding of payments economics (e.g., interchange, fees, transaction cost drivers) preferred

• Demonstrated ability to build and communicate business cases, including financial modeling, ROI analysis, and scenario planning

• A strong sense of intellectual curiosity and ability to thrive…