Financial Risk Specialist

ING Bank N.V. - Trading Risk Management (TRM) is looking for a Financial Risk Specialist to strengthen the Initial Margin squad of its Exposure Management (EM) - Initial Margin/Variation Margin (IMVM) team.

The team

The TRM department is a central part of ING’s risk management framework, with primary responsibility for assessing, monitoring, and managing risks of all trading books. TRM is independent from the revenue generating divisions of the firm and reports to the firm’s Chief Risk Officer (CRO), Global Head of Financial Risk and TRM.

Within TRM, the IMVM team focusses on various risk management aspects around collateral and more particularly on (1) the compliance to the collateral policy eligibility criteria of Variation Margin (VM) for OTC Derivatives & Securities Financing transactions and (2) the activities around Initial Margin (IM) model results.

In current times of high market volatility driven by economic and political uncertainty, the collateral management of Financial Markets and Global Treasury (FMGT) is high on the regulators’ agendas, which entails that the industry and ING must comply to numerous regulations. Additionally, Management & Risk Committees require information for strategical decisions and risk appetite management.

IM is an increasingly important part of FMGT strategy and aims to reduce the systemic Counterparty Credit Risk (CCR) linked to default events. Within the TRM IMVM IM squad, you will work alongside a group of knowledgeable specialists in Initial Margin Risk Management and be jointly responsible to ensure that ING holds sufficient collateral to weather any potential storm from counterparty credit risk perspective. You will jointly ensure that ING further enhances its processes around Initial Margining and get the opportunity to gain knowledge and experience in counterparty credit risk and collateral management.

With the IMVM team, you will work in an Amsterdam based equal opportunities department as part of a team of 6 specialists who will be happy to welcome you into their midst. This multi-cultural, informal, and result-orientated team works from the office for 1-2 days per week. As sub-team of TRM, you will also be part of a larger, dynamic, and very international department.

Roles and Responsibilities:

The main activities as Financial Risk Officer within the IM squad cover recurrent and ad-hoc activities, being amongst others :

Recurring activities

• Ensure timely and accurate daily IM vs PnL back-testing and highlight/explanation of outliers

• Interact with the Asset Class Centre of Excellence (COE) to link market trends to IM changes and outliers
• Report and escalate processing or data errors that impact efficient risk management and monitoring
• Prepare (and participate to) the monthly IM related documentation for Management & Risk Committees used as input for discussions with Front Office, TRM and Collateral
• Review the process overrides and opine on their relevancy over time
• Aggregate the daily results into the quarterly (regulatory) reporting

Ad-Hoc activities

• Collaborate with the regulatory risk team and respond to regulatory requests promptly
• Participate in regulatory examinations, internal audits and model validations
• Act as liaison between Collateral operations and other departments to reconcile IM breaks/disputes with counterparties
• Contribute to product and regulatory related projects and initiatives, including system upgrades, testing and set up of new products, desk/risk management system migrations, market data sourcing, roll out reporting solutions, …
• Support (senior) team members in new product or trade approvals
• Review and implement risk policies around collateral related topics and prevent material and immaterial damage, including reputational damage
• Advice about and enhance reporting activities to senior management
• Utilize your skillset to improve tasks, calculations and monitoring activitie

​How to Succeed:

We hire people for their potential. Our biggest expectation is that they stay curious, keep learning and take on responsibility. In return, we’ll bac