Financial Risk Analysis with Python- Barclays
Project overview:
You are hired as a Financial Data Analyst by Barclays, a major global banking institution. As
digital transactions rise and customers diversify their account usage, the executive team wants
to uncover patterns in customer financial behavior, account performance, and transaction risks
to improve customer service and minimize financial risk.
The leadership is particularly interested in understanding:
● How do customers interact with different account types (e.g., savings, current, credit)?
● What are the trends in debit vs. credit transactions across segments?
● Can we identify accounts with unusually high risk or inconsistent financial activity?
● What transaction behaviors correlate with lower account balances or overdraft incidents?
Objective: Build a complete Customer Financial Behavior and Risk Analysis Report using
Python for data handling. This report should clean and consolidate Barclays’ customer account
data, uncover transaction insights, and help decision-makers align customer strategies with
usage trends and financial risk indicators.
(If you're unfamiliar with concepts, or domain-specific terms, feel free to take the help of Google
or AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to understand them better and apply them effectively in your
project.)
Dataset: Barclays Financial Transactional Data
Dataset Overview: This dataset provides a transactional summary of Barclays’ customer
accounts, including account numbers, transaction dates, transaction types (credit/debit),
transaction amounts, account types, and available balances.
Tasks to be performed:
(Please refrain from using AI to perform the tasks mentioned below, as it will only
provide generic solutions.)
Task 1: Data Cleaning and Formatting (10 Marks)
● Remove/treat any special characters or non-numeric entries from financial fields.
● Convert currency amounts into numerical format.
● Validate and format date columns.
● Ensure account types and transaction categories are standardized.
Task 2: Descriptive Transactional Analysis (20 Marks)
● Calculate monthly and yearly summaries of total credits, debits, and net transaction
volume.
● Plot trends in total credits vs. debits over time.
● Identify top and bottom performing accounts based on net inflow.
● Identify and flag accounts as dormant or inactive if there is a gap of two months or more
between consecutive transactions.
Task 3: Customer Profile Building (20 Marks)
● Group accounts by activity levels: High, Medium, Low based on transaction frequency on
your analysis and rubrics. Do not forget to mention the rubric in the headings.
● Segment customers by average balance and transaction volume.
● Create profiles for:
○ High-net inflow accounts
○ High-frequency low-balance accounts
○ Accounts with negative or near-zero balances
Task 4: Financial Risk Identification (10 Marks)
● Track accounts with frequent large withdrawals or overdrafts.
● Calculate balance volatility using standard deviation or coefficient of variation.
● Use IQR or z-score methods to detect anomalies.
● Highlight customers with irregular or suspicious transaction behavior.
Task 5: Visualisation (10 Marks)
● Conduct extensive exploratory data analysis with attractive visualizations for your
findings
Task 6: Hypothesis Testing (10 Marks)
● Test whether high-volume transaction accounts have statistically higher average
balances than low-volume accounts.
● Conduct hypothesis testing based on segmentation.
Task 7: Video Presentation (20 Marks)
(The summary should be in your own words and must not be generated using AI. Please
don’t write a script and read it aloud. Use charts from your analysis as visual aids in the
video.)
● Record a short video of 5 mins summarizing findings and insights.
● Highlight what drives customer transaction behavior and financial risk.
● Discuss data-backed recommendations for customer engagement or monitoring.
Note:
● Place all code files, and summary PDF in one folder and then zip that folder.
Follow basic coding ethics (headlines, pointers for insights and comments
wherever required)
● Plagiarism will result in a penalty, including possible project disqualification.
● The project will be evaluated based on the quality of analysis and visualizations,
depth of insights, feasibility of recommendations, clarity of explanations, and
adherence to instructions and deliverables.
● If you set your own criteria (e.g., for flagging risk years or segmenting periods),
clearly mention them. Marks will be given according to the specified criteria if they
are acceptable.
● Remember to keep the video length less than 5 minutes with your face clearly
visible. Add the video link in the code file or in the document.
Submission Guidelines:
● Save the code file, and summary in a PDF and then convert it into a zipped (.zip)
folder. (Please note, the drivelink for the video created should also be added in
the PDF itself.)
● Upload the zipped folder on your respective dashboard.
● Failure to comply with submission guidelines will result in no grading/0 marks.
How to ZIP a PDF file:
● Put all of the documents you want to compress (or just one) into a new folder.
● Right click on that folder.
● Select the “Compress to ZIP file” option and then click “Compressed (Zipped) folder.”
● A new .ZIP file will be created that contains your document(s).
In order to submit the projects please follow the following steps:
1. Click on “ Your progress View details” after logging into your dashboard.
2. Next, click on the tab for the specific child course for which you want to
download the problem statement. Then, scroll down to find the "Course Project"
section.
3. Now, click on the three dots on the right-hand side of the "Course Project" tab to
select "Download Problem Statement."
4. Please follow the guidelines (screenshot is shared below) provided in the project
to ensure correct submissions. Then, click on "Upload Project Solution" to submit
your work.
