Affirmations & Confirmations Officer at Citi

Job Purpose:

• The Affirmations/ Confirmations Officer key responsibility is to provide after-sales customer support to Citibank N.A. South Africa’s customers through various mediums of communication, primarily the telephone and e-mail.  The strategic objective is to continually realign operational or delivery capabilities with customer expectations.  To provide excellent customer service by adhering to the SLA between Treasury Ops and Treasury.
• Settlement/confirmation and reconciliation of trades booked occurs timeously and accurately.
• The Affirmation/ Confirmations Officer is also responsible to affirm and confirm trades for SSA Cluster branches.

Job Background:

Trops Management are dependent on the Affirmations and Confirmations Officer to update them on the details of customer activities so that they can identify the Key risk areas which can expose the bank in the event of any dispute with clients.

Providing a single window for the customer’s problem-resolution, the Affirmations and Confirmations Officer prevents calls from being passed on to the operations areas so that, operations processing can occur without interruptions.

Key Responsibilities:

Daily

Affirmation and Confirmations

• Ensure efficiency and accuracy in completing daily functions in line with Local Operating Procedure (LOP)
• On a daily basis review unconfirmed/unaffirmed deal reports received from support and follow up with Clients for their affirmation and confirmations.
• Any discrepancies identified during the affirmation process must be escalated to Treasury for resolution.
• Update trades in our booking system when affirmation or confirmation is received.
• Send a daily list of unconfirmed trades to the Treasury Operations Head for review.
• Investigating queries that cannot be resolved immediately by interacting with various operations areas and escalate to Supervisor if not resolved.
• Following up on any issues remaining from previous business days.

Investigation Process

Nostro:

• Investigate and reconcile all open items in our nostro’s accounts for South Africa and escalated to Seniors if required.
• Investigate and reconcile all open items in our internal suspense accounts for South Africa and escalate to Seniors if required.
• Query all non-receipt of funds with Clients or internal partners
• Query all non-payments with our processing team for clarification and resolution.
• Report all nostro breaks to SCOO/Treasury/Trops head/Risk/Relationship Associates and Relationship Managers for visibility and subsequent assistance in resolving the issues.

Funding:

Send account balances of all our Nostro accounts to Treasury for them to arrange funding if any account is overdrawn.  

Reports:

• Generate daily MIS reports:

1. Reports from system called Missuite/Scheduler
2. Nostro and Cluster nostro
3. Unconfirmed confirmation reports (FX/MM, Options and Derivatives)

MCA:

• Assist in performing monthly Managers Control Assessment

Knowledge/Experience:

• Telephonic customer service in the financial services industry where emphasis was placed on product knowledge and resolution of varied problems.
• Banking experience.
• Computer experience (MS Windows, Excel, Access, Word)
• On-the-job training provided for the Citibank systems and processes.
• Understanding of the legal / audit requirements inherent to the job.

Skills:

• Excellent communication skills (written and verbal) at all organisational levels.
• Excellent working knowledge of MS Office.
• Proficient in the use of computer applications and packages.
• Ability to prioritise and organise own workload.
• Excellent decision-making skills
• Excellent customer service skills - ability to empathise with customers.
• Persevere with tasks until they are completed.
• Ability to work well within team environment displaying willingness to help colleagues when required.

Qualifications:

• B Com or similar is required

Personal Attributes:

• Care about customers and enjoy working in a customer-focused environment.
• Are energetic, enthusiastic & methodical.
• Enjoy solving problems and decision-making.
• Fully understand the importance of service & the creation of positive customer experiences.
• Show initiative.
• Are presentable and friendly and can work under pressure