Meet Yan Li

Quanitative Analytics

The Past: “How did you get here?”

What distinguished Wells Fargo from other competitors, as a professional opportunity for you?

From my own experience, the Quantitative Associate Program at Wells Fargo is a great program that really cultivates learning and career development. The program starts with a two-month classroom training that covers a broad range of topics that go beyond quantitative techniques. The intensive in-person training is followed by rotations with three different teams that offer new associates expanded perspectives and growth opportunities. The program laid a solid foundation and jump started my career at Wells Fargo.

 

The Present: “What do you do here?”

What is a typical work day like for you?

A typical day of a new associate depends on what you are working on at that moment. If you are developing new models, you will most likely spend a lot of time reading papers and implementing mathematical models in C++. Besides developing new models, quite often you will be providing analytical support to traders, and ensuring that your models perform well for live trades under the real-time market environment. Another part of the job is to work on requests from stakeholders such as model validation, market risk and IT. Given the workflow and workloads, it is very important to prioritize your tasks and efficiently utilize your time.

What was your most enjoyable project at Wells Fargo? Why?

My most enjoyable project is always my next one. So far, I have enjoyed all projects I have worked on at Wells Fargo and I have learned a lot through them. I came from a physics background. The Quantitative Associate Program provided me great opportunities to rotate with three different groups in the first year: market risk and counterpart risk analytics team, commodity derivatives model validation team, and interest rates front office. Each rotation gave me unique exposure to different financial products and models, enabled me to utilize my strong analytical skill sets, and helped me to develop my own knowledge base about each of the products I have worked on.

What are the top three skills (technical and soft) that are required, daily, in your role?

The top three useful/required skills in my day-to-day work would be strong mathematical and programming skills, thorough understanding of the capital market, and efficient communication skills.

How would you describe the corporate culture of your group?

The friendly environment and culture of my team encourages personal excellence, drives intellectual curiosity, and provides career growth. 

 

The Future: “Where do you want to go?”

What future opportunities do you hope to embark on in your career? Does Wells Fargo provide avenues to foster these goals?

I am always very curious to explore new things. I hope to become an expert in quantitative and algorithmic trading. At some point in my career, I hope I will have the opportunity to explore the business side of the job. Wells Fargo definitely provides many opportunities to foster my goals. The daily work gives me great exposure to the ever-evolving financial products and models. It also helps me to develop my own knowledge base about how to price and hedge each product and the trading strategies involved.

 

Advice: A word to the wise…

A motivational piece of advice you wish someone told you as a young professional going into your specific industry?

Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

A professional piece of advice you wish someone told you as a young professional going into your specific industry? 

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

 

Helpful Resources

Learn more about the Application Process

Back to Early Careers Home Page

Click link to Meet our Team Members