Assistant Manager/Senior Analyst - Derivative Confirmations

Derivative Confirmations - Assistant Manager / Senior Analyst (Rates, Credit, FX, Commods, Equities)

Overall Job Purpose :

Derivative Post Trade Services is a cross-asset class function responsible for ensuring that all Interest Rate, Credit, Equity, Commodity and Foreign Exchange Derivatives are controlled and settled in an efficient and cost effective manner. The department supports a broad range of operational services across the OTC trade lifecycle including lifecycle management, affirmation, confirmation, nostro and brokerage reconciliation as well as strategic product support.

The department is proactive in implementing state of the art systems and procedures to support our OTC Derivative business in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. We are considered industry leaders and continually look for ways to implement efficiencies, reduce risk to the firm and enhance the experience of our clients.

Main Function :

- Develop and manage operational relationships with our clients through pro-active affirmation and confirmation of Derivative trades.

Shift : APAC / UK / US Shift Coverage

Key Accountabilities :

Assist the AVP in the running of the daily BAU functions, including :

- Acting as the escalation point for B3

- Conducting training with junior members of staff and new joiners

- Taking the lead in UAT for departmental initiatives and projects and proactively suggest system enhancements to improve team efficiency

- Affirmation of Derivative trades with internal and external counterparties

- Production of ISDA paper trade confirmations for all vanilla and some complex Interest Rate Derivative trades.

- Incoming validation and matching of paper and electronic trade confirmations, including DSMatch.

- Responsible for the effective management and resolution of trade discrepancies, including:

- Acting as the first point of contact for Premier clients. Use extensive knowledge of derivatives and the function as a whole to ensure exceptional client service is provided to the firm's high value, or sensitive clients.

- Professional communication with thorough and detailed explanation to clients via e-mail or phone

- Fostering excellent working relationship with internal counterparts (i.e. Desk, Sales team, Trade Support, Settlements, Legal, Finance). Ability to negotiate effectively with all internal parties to ensure the team receives the necessary support to achieve its goals.

- Exercising strong judgement skills to make the necessary decisions to address client queries and ensuring all high-priority queries are escalated to the management immediately

- Uphold the controls and procedures for the team, and highlight any control gaps identified to management to ensure that these are reviewed and addressed as necessary.

- Prepare Local and Global MIS for distribution to management

- Proactively cross train on all functions performed within the team and across the department to gain an in-depth understanding of the derivative products and processes in order to drive synergies within Post Trade services

- Initiate process improvements within the team to drive efficiency and cost savings:

- Strong analytical skills required to perform complex analysis on the volumes and process flow to identify the root cause.

- Suggest innovative solutions to improve efficiency and provide the AVP with a detailed breakdown to quantify the time/ headcount savings from the initiative

- Act as the key point of contact with stakeholders (i.e. Technology, Change Manager, Team AVP) in order to implement change

Person Specification :

- Degree educated with 3-5 years experience in an OTC Derivatives environment.

- Extensive technical knowledge of the derivative products within remit

- Strong understanding of the end-to-end processes in the Confirmations and/or Settlements area

- Experience gained in High Volume House and client service environment.

- Strong knowledge of Microsoft Excel

- Strong communication and negotiation skills in order to manage the relationship with Premier clients, fluent in English.

- Highly numerate with analytical problem solving ability.

- Results Driven.

- Commitment and loyalty to the brand.

- Self Starter / Ambitious.

- Willingness to take on responsibility.

- Confidence to deal with both external and internal clients.

- Attention to detail