Trade Support Rates Derivatives and Credit

Overall purpose and main responsibilities and duties of the role:

• Front Office level support for UK Rates derivatives trading desk and Credit trading desk
• Adherence to our investment clients internal policies and regulatory requirements framing the business activity.
• Provide support to the rates Traders in securing the booking, positions and inherent risks of their books.
• Scope includes: IRS, Inflation Swaps, Exotic Swaps, Caps Floors, Money Market, FX and Futures, bonds (Gilts), Corporate bonds, Government bonds and bond futures.
• Be the back-up cover in relation to supporting other range of underlying/business lines within the Trade Support group. (FX / Commodities)
• The scope can be extended to specific situations where applicable, including other business lines or geographical locations.

Main responsibilities and duties of the role:

• Develop hands-on leadership in the day to day running flow of production; strive for excellence in the operational processes
• Promote a strong and reactive performance culture within the Trade Support production chain
• Develop strong relationships with the Front Office desks
• Ensure the best quality of service is delivered to the Trade Support clients, i.e. Front Office Traders, Sales whilst ensuring our investment clients internal frameworks and policies are adhered to.
• Communicate efficiently and adequately to transversal departments and downstream chain
• Support new business line requirements and business initiatives; apply problem solving skills and agile contribution to the development of new solutions for daily production
• Participate and propose reinforcement of ad hoc controls and reconciliations that should be in place across products, with a strong focus in mitigating the operational risk factor. Ensure a good level of knowledge of the complete lifecycle of trades.
• Communicate as well as coordinate with appropriate teams across the lifecycle stakeholders from FO to Product Control to BO
• Analyse, challenge, report and escalate appropriately potential issues. Mitigate operational risks.
• Understanding and capacity to analyse transactions with associated hedging and risk representations

Daily Production tasks, not restricted to & subject to evolve:

• Liaise with Head Office based Trade Support to gain knowledge and setup London desk processes
• Ensures all trades within scope are in the system for correct p&I and risks on trade date
• First level of control of manually booked trades at inception (economic details, booking specificities, technicalities of system requirements)
• Whilst Traders remain accountable for proper representation in the systems, assist FO in booking of trades when required following the roles & responsibilities matrix and embedded 4 eye checks through dedicated queues
• First point of entry and ownership of the analysis securing legitimacy for amendments/cancellations requests in relation to the Primary Economical Terms of the transactions. Challenge, measure the impacts, report, and action the amendments under Trader’s approvals
• Initiate workflow of approvals with other departments (e.g. Market risk & Quants) in relation to amendments not pertaining to primary economical terms (e.g. in relation to models & risks). On approval proceed to action amendments, measure impacts and report to traders.
• Monitoring of product lifecycle events impacting the positions internally & externally when facing the Market & OTC clients (e.g. Future expiries, conditional payoffs, EOM deliverables).
• Post trade life cycle generations of events within scope (Option expiries monitoring, manual payoffs calculation & bookings)
• Ad-hoc reporting e.g. Hit/Miss / CC reports
• Answer and liaise to punctual requests from transversal departments (e.g. Internal Audit, Compliance Control, Anti-Fraud, other GMO departments)

JOB REQUIREMENTS – KEY SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Key skills, experience, personal attributes required (include problem solving aspects) and Specialist /technical or professional qualifications, including any registrations (FCA or other) required:
• Good communication skills with Traders/Sales/IT/Management and team members.
• High level of commitment, reactivity, reliability on support related issues.
• Excellent autonomy with the systems, processes and decision taking frameworks.
• Capacity to challenge Traders requests whilst maintain professional report.
• Capacity to cope with long working days when required.
• Capacity to troubleshoot front office related issues and escalate situations of risk.
• “Hands on” and “Can Do” attitude.
• Attention to detail

Specialized skills:

• Strong understanding of the following Products:
• Commodities (Swaps Fixed/Float. Float/FLoat, Gas Formulas, Options, Futures, Physical, Warrants)
• Fixed Income (IR, FX, MM)
• Capacity to develop knowledge of any new asset class, products when required for business requirements
• Strong first level of financial approach: identification of trades with their associated hedge and risks
• Knowledge of trade life cycle for listed and OTC trades at inception and downstream levels, as well as impacts for Marple in terms of Market risks and official P&L publication.
• Understanding of Front Office systems: SOPHIS / MUREX / SUMMIT and system Gateways interactions.
• Advanced knowledge of Excel
• Understand static & market data in the system, and how these may impact positions.
• Capacity to challenge and improve processes / systems with strong analytical skills
• Understanding of the regulatory requirements framing the activities covered.