Senior Analyst, Financial Risk in FRMD Collateral Risk

at  Bank of England

THE COLLATERAL MANAGEMENT TEAM

In the Markets directorate, we run the Bank’s lending operations in financial markets, to implement monetary policy and maintain financial stability. Within that, the Collateral Risk Team assesses the suitability and risks of collateral pledged in those operations.
Over half a trillion pounds worth of assets are overseen by the team day-to-day. More are expected: as the Bank’s Quantitative Easing programme unwinds, we expect that commercial banks will need to borrow more from the Bank on a regular basis – via our repo operations – thereby increasing the need for banks to bring us collateral.
Beyond the team’s day-to-day activities, we are also very involved in crisis and contingency planning. We are responsible for managing risks to public funds coming from any collateralised emergency lending to firms – including implementing any lessons learned from the banking failures in 2023 .
Our team manages a wide range of assets, currently worth over half a trillion points. The types of collateral our team is responsible for includes: portfolios of retail loans, such as mortgages and consumer loans; portfolios of corporate loans, such as asset finance and SME loans; and structured finance products secured by the same types of loan products – as detailed on our Eligible Collateral webpage.

ROLES IN THE TEAM

To meet these challenges, we are increasing the size of the Collateral Management Team.
We offer an outstanding and exciting place to work – with lots of collaboration across other teams in the Markets directorate and the wider Bank – in a role which brings together elements of banking supervision, policy development, market operations, hands-on risk management and data analysis into one role. Regular interaction with external parties is central to the role.

All roles in the team cover our core risk management of collateral assets. This includes:

• leading relationships with the Bank’s collateral participants;
• analysing the financial risks from their portfolios of loans and assigning ‘haircuts’;
• assessing our counterparties’ lending policies and practices;
• reviewing the risks arising from structured finance products;
• managing collateral in the event of counterparty default;
• reviewing our risk management policies and processes; and
• presenting recommendations to internal committees.

We are interested in receiving applications from a diverse pool of applicants, as this is a team that exemplifies the Bank’s aim of creating a diverse and inclusive environment. In addition, colleagues across the team bring a mix of skills – ranging from data science; expertise in retail credit risk; counterparty & relationship management; structured finance expertise; counterparty default coordination; reviews of external assurance – all of which contribute in different ways to our success.
As our team expands, we are looking for colleagues with any such skills – see the criteria below. While not essential, we are interested in applicants with a background in structured finance, corporate/SME lending and data science, as we are looking to increase our focus in those areas over the medium term.