Fixed Income Settlements

As a Fixed Income Settlements Senior Associate at Kiya.ai, you will play a critical role in ensuring the timely and cost-effective settlement of fixed income transactions. Your responsibilities will encompass managing the full lifecycle of settlements, from trade instruction and matching to reconciliation and risk mitigation, all while maintaining strong relationships with various internal and external stakeholders.

Primary Responsibilities of the Team:

• Ensure timely settlement of DTCC transactions.
• Ensure timely settlement of Euroclear transactions.
• Daily monitoring and resolution of Loanet contract compare breaks.
• Process Loanet same-day trade closeouts.
• Monitor and resolve breaks, DKS, and nostro reconciliation items.
• Manage the settlement and resolution of DTC coupon & redemption items.
• Mitigate operational and reputational risk by escalating issues in a timely and efficient manner.
• Liaise with clients, brokers/counterparties, and other internal support functions to ensure smooth settlement of trades.

Key Responsibilities:

Responsible for Fixed Income settlement, on a timely and cost-effective basis by:

• Ensuring all trades are instructed, matched, and settled on a timely basis.
• Monitoring of failing trades.
• Reducing fails and/or potential fails through pairing off or partialing down deliveries.
• Minimizing fails by means of partial deliveries where possible.
• Pre-matching trades on a daily basis.
• Managing cash related to funding trades.

Responsible for solving Nostro and Depot reconciliation breaks on a timely basis:

• Investigating and, where possible, clearing all nostro breaks reported by Securities Control teams.
• Investigating and, where possible, rectifying all depot breaks on a timely basis reported by Securities Control teams.
• Investigating and solving accounting breaks raised by Securities Control & Accounting teams.
• Escalating items that represent operational risk to the direct Manager.

Contribute to the minimization of settlement costs & operational risk by:

• Becoming more risk-aware and by following established procedures or Compliance rules to mitigate operational or reputational risk.
• Monitoring and taking appropriate actions in case of market risks (buy-ins).
• Seeking to improve STP (Straight Through Processing) rates at our custodians to reduce cost, by updating static data as and when necessary.
• Reducing the number of manual instructions sent to agents, thereby reducing cost, manual intervention, and settlement risk according to Compliance rules.
• Using the escalation process when operational risk is detected, if necessary.

Contribute to the overall successful running of the settlement department by:

• Maintaining close relationships with traders and sales, and escalating problems to them promptly where required.
• Maintaining good working relationships with domestic agents and custodians.
• Communicating with, and assisting, other operational departments where needed.
• Ensuring direct Managers are kept informed of any potential problems and issues where appropriate.

Contribution to the team development:

• Formalization of team procedures and operating guides.
• Participation in training and coaching for new joiners.

Skills and Competencies:

• Ability to analyze, organize, and report efficiently.
• Flexibility in working methods and adapting to a changing international environment.
• Rigorous and reactive in order to face pressure and consistently achieve excellence.
• Diligently follow all set procedures and Compliance policies.
• Knowledge of financial markets and products, and ease/expertise in dealing with Excel.
• Proficient in English (spoken and written).
• Experience with Amer Support is a plus.