Associate / Vice President, Middle Office, Global Markets (Japanese speaking)

Associate / Vice President, Middle Office, Global Markets (Japanese speaking)Country : Hong Kong

The GM Middle Office department is within the first line of defence and contributes to the success of the Santander Asia through a group of knowledgeable professionals that identify, assess, manage and report risks and controls in the operations and middle office areas. In addition, the team’s scope also includes other areas such as facilitating the global markets business and relevant support areas, enabling the achievement of strategic objective and supporting the Santander Asia corporate goals within agreed risk appetite constraints.

Key Responsibilities

Responsible for control and support functions of operations initiated by the front office in Hong Kong, for Fixed Income Market transactions to facilitate and ensure all operations are processed efficiently and in a timely manner.

Responsible for assisting and controlling the Rates, Credit and Securitised Products business line including products such as US Treasury Bond, EUR Government Bond, LATAM Government Bond, US Corporate Bond, EUR Corporate Bond, US Repo, EUR Repo, Structured Credit and Other Securitised Products, etc. This includes trade monitoring, workflow control, and trade validation to ensure timely settlement and accuracy of front office positions, risk exposure and trade capture.

A point of contact to liaise with entities, both internally (front office sales, front officer traders, and Global and Local middle office and back office) and externally (Financial Institutional clients in Asia including Japan).

Participate to the development of a reliable and effective control function of the perimeter, business projects, new products, system enhancement / deployment and various projects related to client business development.

Input the trade activities in the front office system to ensure the transactional integrity and the legitimacy of trading positions across trading applications and complete all trades are captured on a daily basis.

Manage trade modifications in front office booking system if requested while ensuring relevant control modifications are accurately reflected in the system, investigate and follow up with numerous teams to resolve discrepancies.

Manage relationships and communications with internal relevant parties and external clients in Asia including Japan.

Support KYC processes for both internal and external communication.

Ensure controls and procedures are documented and updated to reduce any potential operational risk.

Provide high level, quality support to front office within the Middle Office’s perimeter and established mandates in Asia.

Review the SLAs and monitor the KPIs for the tasks being outsourced.

Demonstrate good understanding of front to back trade flows as well as Risk and PnL, and work closely with the other departments (i.e. market risk, credit risk, financial control etc) to resolve the issues and move actions forward.

Attend management meetings and discuss any operational issues / enhancement / collaborations.

Requirements

University degree.

Minimum years of experience in Middle Office / Global Market Operations. Candidates with more experience may be considered for VP level.

Good understanding of Global Markets products, trade settlements (DTC / Euroclear / Fed), treasury operation and operational risk framework. Knowledge on international regulations (Dodd Frank, EMIR, MiFID II) will be a plus.

Excellent Interpersonal and communication skills including written and oral English and Japanese.

Ability to multi-task and work in different time zone, with a strong sense of ownership and commitment to delivery. Rigour and sense of organisation, autonomy, capacity to cooperate / ability to work across disciplines, sensitivity to operational risk, ability to work under pressure with good adaptability to constantly changing environment and ability to learn quickly new knowledge such as systems and policies.

Competence in Murex, Swift, Markitwire, Bloomberg, Equation and Microsoft Office is preferred.