Offers “HSBC”

Expires soon HSBC

Analyst, Traded Risk Stress Testing

  • Edinburgh (City of Edinburgh)
  • Accounting / Management control

Job description

Role Title: Analyst, Traded Risk Stress Testing

Business: Risk Management

New or Existing Role? New

Grade: GCB5

Role Purpose

· The Wholesale Credit and Market Risk (WMR) department within HSBC Group Risk measures and monitors globally credit and market risks arising from lending and trading activities as well as credit approval for large corporate, financial institution and sovereign exposures.
· The Stress Testing team within WMR ensures that stress testing is implemented across the group in line with best practice for the purpose of (i) risk management, (ii) compliance with the Basel II/III regulatory framework and (iii) meeting enterprise-wide stress testing needs. One of the primary objectives of this team is to ensure that stress testing is executed consistently across market risk and counterparty risk. Contribution to wholesale credit risk is also expected. The scope of the team is both the trading and the banking books.

· Positions within the Stress Testing team focus on one risk type at a time with the intention to rotate on a regular basis. As such, the team remains a center of expertise for stress testing across the risks covered by WMR.

· The role requires the ownership and accountability on some of the key elements of the global stress testing framework. Those includes: (i) providing methodology guidance to the local sites with the support of the Group methodology team (RRA), (ii) consolidating results, (ii) delivering analysis to Senior Management and (iv) ensuring that stress testing is meeting the demand of the front office.

More specifically the responsibilities of the position are as follows:

· Market and economics : Lead regular market and economic analyses to ensure that our stress scenario library is suited for pro-active risk management. Lead the calibration of relevant stress scenarios ensuring consistency across all risk factors used both in market and credit risk.

· Risk management : Form a judgment on the appropriateness of exposure/positions vs. risk appetite using stress results computed by numerous teams across the Group. Help risk appetite definition. Transform Senior Management strategy and questions into practical stress testing approach to improve risk-reward decisions. Take initiatives to develop innovative solutions.

· Regulation and methodology : Take responsibility for ensuring that stressed risk measures are in line with best practice and meet regulatory requirements. Guide the methodology team to develop robust tools and infrastructure.

· Expertise : Be part of the team that is the main point of contact in WMR for stress testing questions coming from local regions, other GMO teams and regulators. Drive the incentive and provide directions to the local sites so that (i) stress testing is used appropriately by risk managers for decision making, (ii) vulnerabilities in the traded portfolio are well understood by senior management.

Key Accountabilities

Impact on Business

· Transform high level macro/market events into relevant scenarios for practical risk mitigation implementation and enterprise-wide stress testing.

· Lead market and credit risk analyses and drive the implementation of new stress scenarios and stress testing methodology through WMR globally for risk arising from trading and wholesale credit activity.

· Drive the incentive and provide directions to the local sites so that (i) stress testing is used appropriately by risk managers for decision making, (ii) vulnerabilities in the traded portfolio are well understood by senior management and credit approval officers, and (iii) stress results are factored into risk appetite and risk mitigation decisions.

· Involvement in the decision process ensuring that stressed risk measures are in line with best practise and meet regulatory requirements. Contribute to the necessary actions required to meet these requirements in terms of governance, methodology, and IT infrastructure.

· Contribute to the implementation and delivery of stress scenario results for capital planning on trading and wholesale credit activity. Guide the local teams in their approach and to calibrate scenarios.

· Take initiatives to develop innovative solutions in order to address ad-hoc requests from senior management on stress scenario results. Lead the development of ad-hoc tools and prototypes.

Customers / Stakeholders

· Work in collaboration with a large numbers of parties to generate, communicate and use stress testing results. The role requires being comfortable with top-down and bottom-up communication (WMR to sites and WMR to Senior Management). This requires taking initiatives to establish good relationships with various teams across business types and geographies.
· The parties includes:
· Senior risk management including global heads of WMR, regional heads of Credit Risk, Market Risk and WMR, head of risk strategy.
· Regional WMR teams for the three risk types.
· Global Markets: sales and trading, credit treasury
· Global Banking: front office portfolio management
· Global Risk Technology
· FSA and other regulators

Leadership & Teamwork

· Emphasis must be put on prioritization of requests from stakeholders and help allocate work efficiently within the team.
· Contribute to various global stress testing committees and provide guidance through policies.
· Provide guidance and training to the regional teams in charge of stress testing.
· Provides support to WMR colleagues when required. Offer innovative solutions.

Operational Effectiveness & Control

· Help drive changes of stress testing approaches, and assist in the implementation of innovative solutions.

· Actively monitor regional practises and guide delivery to ensure that they are in line with Group policies. Ensure that Group Audit reviews of systems and practises related to stress testing and risk measurement proceed smoothly.

· Ensure that Group risk stress testing systems are validated successfully by the Quantitative Risk and Valuation Group (QRVG), developed and tested consistently with Group Risk-Based Project Management (RBPM) guidelines, and documented clearly and comprehensively.

· Leadership over all regulatory and compliance matters and the management of operational risk

Major Challenges

Technical field

· Understand complex market and credit risks arising from loans and derivatives trading. Apply judgment to determine which risks are significant and likely enough that they warrant management attention.
· Develop an expertise in stress testing techniques in the field of market risk, traded credit and wholesale risk.
· Being able to acquire knowledge of risk systems, algorithm and script language reasonably fast.
· Must have and maintain a deep understanding of market behavior and economics, to guide definition of stress scenarios.
· Identifying key business needs and translating these into clear systems requirements that can be implemented by developers.
· Ability to find simple and pragmatic solutions to complex problems, balancing the desire to build models with strong theoretical foundations with the need to develop models that can be explained and tested easily.

Management

· The role requires forming a judgment on the relevance of external requests in order to prioritize them.
· Prioritize numerous requests at once and manage timing and stakeholders' expectation appropriately. Field of focus relates to risk management, methodology, governance and IT infrastructure.
· Distilling complex issues down into simple messages that can be understood easily by senior management and non-technical staff.
· Finding the balance between attentions to details without loosing sight of the bigger picture is critical when performing stress testing.

Role Context

· As described in introduction, this role sits in (i) Wholesale Credit and Market Risk (Group), (ii) Traded Risk team, (iii) Stress Testing team.

· This role sits at group level and covers and large scope of risks, stakeholders and geographies. This is why the ability to prioritise tasks efficiently is a key skill.

· This position acts as subject matter expert on stress testing and must meet expectations of high standards for delivery to senior management and regulators.

· This position has also a significant exposure throughout the Group because it is responsible for providing guidance to regional stress testing team.

Management of Risk

· The team delivers a key requirement on the Group's risk stress testing. If this function is not executed properly the Bank's traded credit and market risk may not be appropriately measure stressed exposure and stress losses, which could be damaging. Furthermore failure could ultimately result in the withdrawal of HSBC's IMM approval.

· The team is a key point of contact for the delivery of stress scenarios required by regulators and by risk strategy for capital planning.

· The jobholder will also continually reassess the operational risks associated with the role and inherent in the business, taking account of changing economic or market conditions, legal and regulatory requirements, operating procedures and practices, management restructurings, and the impact of new technology.

· This will be achieved by ensuring all actions take account of the likelihood of operational risk occurring. Also by addressing any areas of concern in conjunction with line management and/or the appropriate department.

Observation of Internal Controls

· The jobholder will also adhere to and be able to demonstrate adherence to internal controls. This will be achieved by adherence to all relevant procedures, keeping appropriate records and, where appropriate, by the timely implementation of internal and external audit points, including issues raised by external regulators.

· The jobholder will implement the Group compliance policy by containing compliance risk in liaison with Global Head of Compliance, Global Compliance Officer, Area Compliance Officer or Local Compliance Officer. The term ‘compliance' embraces all relevant financial services laws, rules and codes with which the business has to comply.

· This will be achieved by adhering to all relevant processes/procedures and by liaising with Compliance department about new business initiatives at the earliest opportunity. Also and when applicable, by ensuring adequate resources are in place and training is provided, fostering a compliance culture and optimising relations with regulators.

Desired profile

Qualifications :

Knowledge & Experience / Qualifications

Background

·  University degree and/or post graduate qualification with a relevant quantitative content.
·  Previous experience in risk management for market risk and/or traded credit risk.
·  Previous exposure to large projects involving technical IT considerations.

Technical skills

·  Thorough understanding of advanced risk management techniques across a diverse portfolio of assets.
·  Good understanding of financial products including derivatives, macro-economics, econometrics and financial markets.
·  Strong knowledge of financial markets and business principles.
·  Financial engineering skills and experience in building credit or market models. Knowledge of VBA is necessary.

Soft skills

·  Good communication skills (oral and written) are essential. Ability to articulate complex ideas in a clear manner.
·  Ability to make decisions quickly is a wide range of field: risk management, technical and governance related.
·  Self-starter, who can think proactively. Demonstrate the ability to learn abstract concepts and to operate effectively against uncertainty and on unfamiliar ground.
·  Must demonstrate the ability to communicate with a various range of stakeholders including technical and non-technical staff.
·  Able to interact effectively with senior management within Risk and the business.
·  Experience in interacting with regulators is useful.

We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to creating a diverse environment.

Make every future a success.
  • Job directory
  • Business directory