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:

• 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.