Role: Fixed Income Business/Functional Analyst “Settlements”

Overview:

The applicant will be accountable for business and functional analysis on the Fixed income Ops IT back-office platforms in the settlement space. This includes mainly Cash and Repo, any knowledge in Future options, derivatives, credit products would be plus.

Key responsibilities are to analyse the requirements and requests of business Middle office, operations & Finance plus other users of IT services, including participation in testing exercises.

This role is the contact for the business divisions & the technology solution providers for all aspects of solution finding and critical production issues.

Essential skills/responsibilities:

• Good understanding of the Fixed Income post trade and settlement lifecycle

• Good understanding of fixed income products and Trade flow.

ü  Corporate bonds, MBS, CMO, ABS, 

ü  Cash trades, Repo trades , B/L, Repo Gensaki

• Good understanding Middle Office functions

ü  Trade Capture, Reporting, Pre-Confirms, Trade Confirms, Trade Matching

ü  Inventory management

• Good understanding of settlement functions

ü  Settlements, Fail Control/Financing, Securities Borrow/Loan,  Inventory Control,

ü  Custody, Stock Record Books & Records and  Corporate Action Processing

• Knowledge of process flows around exchanges and clearing houses, central counterparty, Novation industry utilities and Depository Trust Companies.

• Good skills in object oriented design pattern.

• Good skills in UML, especially activity/use case diagram and component diagram

• Multiyear working exposure in an application development environment

• Basic understanding of JAVA and PL/SQL. Good skills in SQL and basic understanding of relational databases (Oracle/Sybase). Experience in IT project work applying methods of requirements analysis, design and test management.

• Document in a clear and concise manner current and future state processes and business events using a system diagram or set of diagrams, and commonly understood set of terms identifying critical inputs and outputs. Create & Modify business facing documentation (e.g. user manuals, solution briefs, functional summaries)

• Analyse technical project requirements documents received from Application Management for functional impacts. Ensure requirements are critical to the business strategy and demonstrate evidence business process re-engineering

• Identify data requirements including data retention requirements and assess current state/risk associated with quality of data, partnering with Data Analysts to analyse new data sources (internal and external), data content , archiving and purging strategies and data “behaviour”  for conformance to requirements, anomalies, quality, consistency.

• Specify and document a set of consensus-based, error free business requirements. Writing of technical/functional specifications based on business requirements/design of IT solutions in accordance with the architecture guidelines, and in agreement with technical and functional architects in the team. Fully understands and can articulate the project scope if questioned.

• Takes ownership for quality of functional spec, ensuring that it meets the business requirements and is fully covered by the Testing Services test pack. Liaising with vendor developers to manage the development

• Verify the requirements are testable. Generate Business & Component test scenarios and testing objectives. Execution of Component test cases and generation of test exit reports, running SIT and supporting UAT. Conduct testing on behalf of users, operations – during period of peak loads in business and/or business analyst groups. Create details of test plans, test cases, test-data & also review the results of interface testing, between different applications, when required.

• Supporting the software release and deployment process. Work with application developers to resolve functional issues from UATs, and to help find solutions for various functional difficulty areas. Work with Application Management area for functional area trouble shooting & resolution to reported bugs / issues on applications

• Act in partnership with project stakeholders to identify and document the business problem that needs to be addressed, gains agreement and sign off of documented Business and Functional requirements.

• Document open questions, issues and coordinates resolution with the Project Manager, Functional Architects and Development teams

• Good communication skills. Conduct interviews and workshops as a means to collect business requirements. Assist and support the Project Manager in prioritisation of change requests

• Flexibility, team spirit and willingness to work in a global team, willingness to work extra hours when needed.
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Key Competencies

• Business and product knowledge in Fixed income area.
• Analysis and problem solving - First class expertise in conceptualisation and solution definition
• Requirement, Functional, technical documentation
• Customer and service orientation
• Technology knowledge and expertise
• Identifying and implementation of commercial solutions
• Workflow/Process reengineering/analysis

• Commitment and priority setting

• Openness to innovation and change
• Integrity, trust and fairness
• Performance orientated

Desirable Skills:

• Future and options, derivatives, credit products settlement life cycle.
• 3 -5 years of experience in business analysis and banking processes
• Ability to identify interests of different stakeholders