Just curious. Are there any differences between "risk management" and a "financial risk analyst" ?

A financial risk analyst works in the risk management field, there are many different types of risk management like investment, operatio, market etc.

Financial risk analyst sounds like coporate treasury role in a mnc, rather in a bank

the word "analyst" is very broad.

you may just be merely generating reports on behalf of risk managers, monitor parameters, perform general admin work, or perform a small repetitive and boring task. all these can constitute to being an analyst, as afterall, you are analyzing the day to day operations.

in risk management, you are really analyzing risk - creating algos and detect risk parameters. perform PnL. And then tell those real "analysts" to prepare reports for them to check.

"creating algo"? means coming up with model valuation, isnt this a quant role?
"perform pnl" should be done by product controllers?

If risk managers are so smart, how come banks still collapsed like lehman?

The reason why Lehman collapse is about poor risk management within the organization not just the risk managers alone. The amount of toxic that it have wasn't reported and never measured. When crisis come, they have problem finding fundings. Everyone demand higher spread where over night Libor spike beyond 500bps. CDS start to widen to a point of no return. It is also because of the funding issue that resulted to 3s/6s fixing spreads.

Will it happen again? I mean when.

Of course, it will happen. History repeat itself but this time not in Europe or US.
It will be in China. After the financial crisis, banks have come under intense scrutiny from regulators and these days they will threaten the bank by demanding instant response and follow-up. FED for example walk into most of the investment banks suddenly and demand pnl attribution for all products. They wrote a letter to the CEO and cc FSA and BaFin. Well if no action taken, the bank's license will be revoked.

algos can apply to many areas. not only quant traders. there's still credit risk. market risk. and more.

product controllers are sometimes called "analyst" in different banks. be sure to enquire fully before making a wrong decision.

Having worked in a top-tier investment bank in risk, to be honest, most of the risk models are already found in John Hull book, no need to create algos and detect risk parameters lah. Actually if you work in foreign banks, even better because these model already developed in HQ London or NY by phds, so dont need to re-invent the wheel, just need to have some feel.

Anyway, the toxic stuff like CDOs are not done anymore. Also not much prop trading in the banks these days given the clamp-down from UK, Euro and US central banks.

The world has changed since the financial crisis, the banks are getting more regulated, and risk managers are doing more related "analyst" jobs to satisfy regulators by churning more reports for them. Dont need to feel such jobs are too lowly.

If you applying jobs for risk management, just keep learning, be humble and willing to take on tasks that are boring/repetitive, master excel vba and automate these tasks, you will do well. Good luck!