Applied Recruitment

PRICING AND COLLATERAL ANALYST, GLOBAL INVESTMENT SERVICES DERIVATIVES, C£40,000 PLUS EXCELLENT BENS, CITY

Our client is one of the world’s largest Money Managers, providing structured investment strategies such as indexing, risk-controlled active products and hedge funds to investors Worldwide. For over 35 years, it has been at the forefront of developing innovative investment ideas, applying science and technology to the investment process and currently employs over 3,000 people Globally and managing $1.8 trillion in assets.

The volume and breadth of derivatives traded across the Company are increasing at an exponential rate across the range of products and fund strategies offered to clients including both active and hedge fund products. The expanding coverage and complexity globally has necessitated the continued growth and development of the derivatives functions in order to effectively manage, support and control the business expansion.

 Global Derivatives Operations

The Global Derivative Operations team plays a key role in the continued success of this business including supporting the continued business growth, managing the control environment and reducing risk, increasing efficiencies and strengthening relationships with our internal and external clients.

The Global team is responsible for the Middle Office and Operations functions supporting the Company’s business across all products and funds which trade a variety of derivatives. These cover all asset classes including credit, rates, inflation, and equity derivatives. Products traded include IRS, Swaptions, CDS, Index, Structured Credit, Inflation Swaps, Repo, TRS (on a variety of underlyings), FX variance and Equity Swaps across a range of G10 and emerging market currencies.

The team are looking for high-quality candidate(s) to join the team and help deliver on key operational goals including medium and longer-term change and strategic agenda and supporting the ambitious business plans in this area. You will be working as part of a growing Global team, and liaising closely with business product and trading groups, other operations and technology groups, legal, as well as external counterparts, custodians and prime brokers.  This is an excellent opportunity to learn about the investment management and hedge fund business as well as derivative products and lifecycle management at the largest money-manager in the world.

Key Functions

The European Confirmations Team Supervisor role is based in the UK. The successful candidate would join the team that are responsible for the functions listed below and would have the further opportunity to develop and work across the other team functions as their career progressed. The 2 core functions are;

Valuations

• Responsibility for primary production and oversight of valuation of the OTC Derivative positions and pricing models.
• Validation of daily pricing moves and changes vs the underlying market data and components. Problem solving and investigations into exceptions and issues.
• The valuations generated by the team can be used within external Fund pricing, for portfolio management and / or to validate valuations produced by other parties

Collateral Management

• Maintain collateral support information within systems to derive support requirements. These requirements are stipulated for the Company’s funds and its’ segregated clients.
• The individual will have responsibility for managing the timely movement of collateral to / from counterparties. The team is responsible for mitigating counterparty credit risk through the collateralisation process. A core function of the team is to ensure that a fund would not be adversely impacted by counterparty default.

Additional functions that the team is responsible for are;

Data: Setup and maintenance of counterparty data, including credit support details
Reconciliation: Ensuring that valuations and collateral reports received from counterparties match the trade details recorded in the Investment Book of record and the collateral management system. Ensure that positions and valuations in the investment book of record match those in the Fund Administrator’s Accounting book of record.
Query Management and Resolution: Working to ensure that discrepancies uncovered by the reconciliation process are resolved within Middle and Front Offices, with counterparties, Fund Administrators & clients

Change Management / Process Improvement: Responsible for generating and implementing ideas to improve the process; user testing and review of systems enhancements and implementations and working on strategic initiatives to improve business process or infrastructure

New product / Instrument Pipeline: Manage setup, process and organisation work as part of the new product and instrument approval processes resulting from new business products.

Audit Requirements:  Ensuring processes and controls within the team produce adequate documentation for Internal and external auditor’s requirements.

Reporting: Responsible for production and accuracy of key management information reporting and control metrics across the group.

 Experience required/to be developed 

• Good knowledge and experience of Fixed Income and Equity products including Derivatives – in particular knowledge of credit, interest rate, inflation and equity derivatives is advantageous
• Business knowledge - understanding of the application of derivatives within an investment strategy, specifically the relevant risks and appropriate controls required across the transaction lifecycle
• Should demonstrate an understanding of operational and credit risks, and the use of collateral and margining as tools for risk management.
• Experience in middle office or operations at a top-tier Investment Manager, Hedge Fund or Investment Bank
• Functional expertise on OTC confirmations, ISDA-based confirmations and collateral management valuable

Skills required / to be developed

• Willingness to learn and desire to develop an in-depth knowledge of derivatives, market practices & regulations, as well as shaping the Company’s approach to derivatives products and processes.
• Structured and organised approach with a strong attention to detail and diligent work ethic
• Enthusiastic and desire to learn with excellent communication skills both written and verbal
• Takes initiative, is ambitious and looks to develop self together with a willingness to participate, positive attitude, flexible approach and excellent teamwork skill
• Understands needs and sensitivities of internal and external clients and proactively ensures these are met
• Process re-engineering – ability to challenge existing processes and come up with clean and quality approaches to managing business requirements, resolve issues and problems
• Prior experience of project management skills and disciplines a benefit

"Think what you could achieve if you knew you couldn't fail" - Anon