Settlement Analyst

SETTLEMENT ANALYST (6 MONTH CONTRACT) (JOB NUMBER: C D000378)

**Description Of The Department**

The Local Custody and Settlements team forms part of the Clearing and Custody Services area of BNP Paribas Securities Services Operations Division. This team is primarily responsible for research and data scrubbing of complex corporate actions events for the local market and completing successful settlement of all domestic securities, for the Australian and New Zealand markets, traded on behalf of BP2S 's clients as well as settling all of their cash payment requirements.

Transactions are received from various internal teams, as well as from the clients directly. They are entered into the various custody platforms by the processing hubs to STP to settlements systems, ie Austraclear, CHESS, NZClear and RITS. The team are also responsible for the managing the banks cash balance and play a critical role in providing cash forecasts to the Treasury desk to ensure the bank remains liquid. The settlements team work to firm deadlines and are often under pressure in a high risk, time critical function.

Local Custody and Settlements communicate widely with external contacts (counterparties, Registries, Market practice groups, data providers and regulatory bodies/exchanges). Local Custody and Settlements also communicate daily with other teams within Operations who they depend upon for correct trade entry and security coding enabling successful completion of their daily settlement activities. Local Custody and Settlements monitor and escalate foreseeable transaction settlement issues, as well as dealing pro-actively in resolving these to allow efficient completion of activities.

Local Custody and Settlements must take place in line with regulatory requirements for the relevant security types. The team identifies, investigates and resolves any settlement or complex corporate events issues to ensure resolution.

**The Officer Will Be Involved In The Following Processes**:

- Fixed Income settlements, using Austraclear and NZClear for the vast majority of trades
- Cash Settlements - through Austraclear, NZClear and RITS.
- Equity Settlements - mainly using an interface to CHESS for Australian listed securities.

The settlements officer will be responsible for monitoring trades into the settlement systems and involvement in settlement issues and queries. They will run settlement reports and work with other parties to identify the issues and correct problems to ensure timely and accurate settlement of client's trades.

The settlements officer will assist to resolve reconciliation breaks and will escalate and report issues with these items. The settlements officer requires accuracy, quality and urgency in their work.

Settlements must take place in line with regulatory requirements for the relevant security. Securities settled include domestic debt markets, equities, futures and cash trades.

They have good knowledge of end to end trade processing and parties, market systems and requirements. They have a reasonable understanding of various domestic securities and their correct treatment and will be reasonably strong in at least one of the following areas - EXIGO, CHESS, NZClear or Cash payments.

They assist with related risk reporting and issue resolution. They demonstrate an improvement focus and their ability to identify and suggest any opportunities for improvement will be valued.

**Key Responsibilites**:

- Trade processing and management of trade settlement.
- Investigation of trade issues and following up with brokers and internal parties.
- Involved in reporting sent by the team.
- Assisting and supporting others within the team to ensure a clean distribution of workloads.
- Clearance of reconciliation items.
- Awareness of market practices.
- Following processes and ensuring mitigation of risk.
- Update of procedures as and when required.

**Qualifications & Experience Required For The Role**
- 2 years+ experience within the financial services industry
- Previously settlement experience desirable
- Understanding of the products the team deal with
- Previous settlement systems experience
- High attention to detail and ability to work to tight deadlines.

**Technical Skills required for the role**:
With reasonable knowledge of settlements systems and processes, they understand settlements are processed within required time constraints, they have the ability to investigate and deal promptly and effectively with trade settlement or matching issues, rectifying identified issues to enable trades to settle. Should a trade fail, they are capable of dealing with counterparties on resolving required actions. They are aware of the relationship between corporate actions (eg. corporate events) on settlements.

They have 1-2 years hands-on experience working with AUSTRACLEAR, CHESS, NZClear or cash payments (RITS) and can demonstrate a sound working knowledge of these systems in particular. They demonstrate sound communication (