Middle-office Officer

Middle-Office Officer - CDSClear Operations - LCH SA

LCH is the leading independent CCP group in Europe, serving major international exchanges and trading platforms, equity markets, exchange-traded derivatives markets, energy markets, the OTC interbank interest rate swaps market and the majority of the Euro-denominated and sterling bond and repo markets.

CDSClear is a unique business within LCH Group, incorporated in LCH SA and established through a partnership with the 11 largest Credit Derivative dealers. CDSClear is a fast-growing Credit Derivative clearing business aiming at becoming the market leader in Europe.

The business has experienced and continues to experience significant and constant growth in Europe, gradually overtaking its European competitor through a strategy of product & service differentiation driven by innovation as well as through a close partnership with main Credit Derivatives market participants. The key initiative of CDSClear is to extend its operating hours for the US market.

The role covers the management of key operational activities:

- Daily Operational Trade Management:

- Management & monitoring of all events impacting trades including novation, credit events, succession events, compression, transfers, and default management
- Trade flow monitoring and rejected trade management
- Margin call monitoring and margin simulations
- Support for increased volumes through backloading and intraday clearing
- Option exercise management
- Member and Client Support:

- Assist clients with day-to-day clearing operations
- Service cloud management for booking member requests
- Incident management, identification and resolution
- Support onboarding of new members
- Risk and Control:

- Develop and maintain a strong operational control environment
- Perform daily/weekly/adhoc controls
- Ensure documentation and audit trails are produced and kept up to date
- Implement Disaster Recovery Plan & Business Continuity Plan for Operations
- Ensure timely resolution of exceptions & issues
- Morning Session Management:

- Morning checks covering the opening of the clearing session
- Margin updates
- Backloading activities
- Clearing of first transactions
- Regulatory reconciliations
- Project and Testing Activities:

- Lead UAT testing for new functionalities, releases, and system enhancements
- Develop comprehensive test plans for internal testing
- Create detailed test scenarios based on business requirements
- Document and maintain test cases for regression testing
- Express and document operational requirements for system improvements
- Validate that new developments meet operational needs
- Support end-to-end testing of the clearing chain
- Participate in project implementation activities and post-implementation reviews
- Contribute to planning and execution of member simulation exercises

Key responsibilities

Integrity
- Develop and maintain a strong operational control environment, performing daily/weekly/adhoc controls
- Ensure timely resolution and/or remediation of exceptions & issues
- Ensure adherence to important metrics, agreed contracts, and internal requirements
- Support regulatory reconciliations and compliance activities
- Maintain complete documentation of procedures, checklists, user guides, and audit trails
- Follow up and implement audit recommendations (operational risk controls & compliance)
- Ensure transparent communication regarding operational issues

Partnership
- Build and maintain strong relationships with business partners including DTCC, TradeServ, Bloomberg, Tradeweb, Markit & PTTR
- Ensure smooth handover of the production service to the New York Operations team at the end of European hours
- Work collaboratively with Technology, Risk, PMO, and other functions
- Support the development and expansion of the client clearing business
- Work with other departments and external parties to establish and agree tasks, plans and responsibilities
- Provide effective communication with members and clients during European business hours

Excellence
- Take initiative, be a self-starter and make decisions for remediating and fixing production issues
- Support the Head of CDSClear Operations in running tasks on production and test environments
- Provide the highest level of service to both members and clients
- Support the increase of volumes through backloading and intraday clearing
- Assist in the implementation of new clearing releases on test & production environments
- Identify incidents to internal colleagues when needed
- Actively participate in UAT testing, member onboarding setup, and project implementation activities
- Create and implement comprehensive test plans for new functionalities and services
- Document and express detailed operational requirements for system enhancements
- Define test scenarios and test cases based on business requirements

Change
- Regularly identify ways to improve departmental processes and policies
- Support continuous improvement in