AVP - Collateral Management - CMS Control & Settlements

AVP - Collateral Management - CMS Control & Settlements

Department Overview :

The Collateral, Liquidity and Funding (CLF) area is a new business-aligned function bringing together a number of critical functions supporting businesses to help meet both our own and the regulatory goals for effective and efficient management of collateral and liquidity across our global businesses. Both of these areas are key to the successful operation of our business and the development and integration of the functions across CLF is key to operating effectively in the coming years.

The Collateral and Margin Services (CMS) function sits within CLF and is responsible for managing collateral exposure and regulatory margin commitments across a range of products and sectors to help minimize credit, market and reputation risks associated to our trading and business activity. Our focus is to ensure high levels of operational control across our processes, as well as to partner closely with business and infrastructure teams to support the efficient use of capital and balance sheet resources for the firm.

Job Purpose :

We are looking for a high quality candidate to join the CMS group and be part of a new centralized control & settlement hub. This function is critical in providing robust internal control governance, assurance and reporting, thus ensuring the BAU control environment is designed and operating effectively.

Main duties & responsibilities :

- Break analysis across all global CMS functions (nostro, depot, third party), including root cause analysis and escalation.

- Balance sheet substantiation (reconciliation) for all global CMS functions where applicable.

- Management Reporting - consolidated reporting & escalation for all CMS exceptions, feeding into monthly exception and escalation reports.

- Oversight of manual PV validation controls & coordination with Product Controllers for semi annual sign off.

- Manage the monthly collateral interest function providing accurate reporting & escalation as required

- Oversight and escalation of settlement fails.

- CASS reporting, oversight and escalation of breaks.

- Coordination of procedure, checklist and process flow updates.

- 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.

- Lead and manage the running of the daily BAU functions, including:

- Ensure the controls, procedures and supporting documentation for the team are reviewed and maintained on a regular basis.

- Conduct and maintain training with staff members.

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

- Provide the best possible service to both our internal and external clients.

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

- Contribute to the specification and testing of improvements for all systems and processes.

- 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 VP with a detailed breakdown to quantify the time/ headcount savings from the initiative.

Risk and Control objective :

- Conduct periodic assessments of the control environment by analysing existing controls and issue around timeliness accuracy and completeness of risk information. Identify missing or weak controls, and work with risk reporting teams and other infrastructure teams to improve the control environment.

- Work with the wider risk reporting and risk management teams to ensure controls are fit for purpose, with agreed schedule to implement missing or weak controls.

- Ensure existing controls are helping the wider risk reporting and risk management function in upholding data quality standards and governance and regulatory policies

Preferred experience :

- Experience (4 + years) in a control or settlement function.

- Direct experience of the OTC derivatives or other products- collateral management functions would be a significant advantage.

- Broad business and operational knowledge across markets and asset classes is valuable.

- Strong approach to risk management and awareness of control across line functions.

- Experience of working with offshore business teams (e.g. London, New York, Singapore).

- Bachelor degree or equivalent experience (MBA or further degree valuable but not essential).

- Excellent interpersonal skills including relationship management, communication and teamwork.

- Strong analytical and problem solving skills.

- Proactive and positive attitude and desire to make a difference.

- Detailed and meticulous, consistently delivering a high level of accuracy and attention to detail with high quality output.

- Able to multi-task and priorities accordingly in a highly pressurized environment.

- Willing to take on responsibility.

- Well organised with good time management skills and the ability to meet tight deadlines and priorities tasks.