Credit Risk Control: Little Value for a Career in Quantitative Finance
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Due to what has been mentioned before (especially under "Vorgesetztenverhalten"), four months after joining the company, I informed my manager that I would be looking for another position and that the company was welcome to terminate my employment. Although my manager repeatedly encouraged me to stay, I consistently reiterated over the following months that my decision remained unchanged. Two days after informing my manager that I had interviews with banks, I was notified during a remote meeting while working from home that my employment would be terminated. A few minutes afterwards, my Microsoft accounts were disabled, leaving me unable to communicate with anyone within the company, including the Chief Risk Officer. The employment reference I initially received did not reflect the positive feedback I had received and was only corrected after legal representation became involved.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Chaotic and well below the level of professionalism I had previously experienced at financial institutions operating under ECB supervision with a three-lines-of-defence framework. Many processes are poorly documented. It was not uncommon for people to have only a limited understanding of the methodology behind certain processes or even of the code they were executing. As a consequence, processes may fail to detect material FX exposures or produce incorrect liquidity figures over extended periods.
Rather than fundamentally improving inefficient or, in some cases, ineffective processes, the priority appeared to be migrating them into new IT systems, while employees were expected to compensate for the resulting deficiencies. This came at the expense of the team, with people expected to answer calls during annual leave or even work during weekends. I was therefore not surprised that several colleagues expressed dissatisfaction with process management or that the "Health" category scored poorly in employee surveys within the team.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
For mathematicians and anyone aspiring to a career in quantitative finance, this role is a dead end and a waste of time. You will gain virtually no exposure to quantitative modelling, which is essential if you ever want to move into a genuine quantitative role. Hiring managers for quantitative positions at major banks are unlikely to attach much value to experience updating SQL tables, reconciling SAP postings with trading system postings or carrying out other operational processes requiring little more than basic arithmetic. They may also be surprised that what is referred to as "FX Hedging" at RWEST is essentially an accounting reconciliation process rather than work involving quantitative models, such as the Heston model, or other methodologies typically associated with quantitative finance.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Shortly after joining, I questioned whether reconciling SAP postings with trading system postings was capable of identifying all relevant FX exposures arising from trading activities. Rather than discussing the underlying methodology, I was instructed simply to execute the process. A few months later, a material FX exposure was indeed not detected. I contributed substantially to the initial versions of the document prepared for the Chief Risk Officer explaining the incident. During a crisis meeting attended by my manager and the colleagues involved in the process, I explicitly pointed out that, in my view, the design of the process was not capable of identifying the type of FX exposure that had materialised. A few days later, I reiterated this assessment by email to my manager, explaining that, in my view, the process would not even have worked if RWE's portfolio had consisted of a single fixed-for-floating USD swap. However, I was not involved in preparing the final version of the document, which attributed the incident to another department, while the general process design itself remained unchanged.
Kommunikation
The team is called "Credit Risk Control" and the recruitment process strongly suggests that the role focuses on counterparty credit risk. Candidates are even encouraged to read Damiano Brigo's Counterparty Risk FAQ before the interviews.
In reality, credit risk accounts for only a small fraction of the role. Most tasks are operational rather than quantitative, including reconciling SAP postings with trading system postings, updating SQL tables, calculating operational expenditures and executing routine reporting processes. Even the credit risk related tasks involve very little analytical thinking and mainly consist of entering deal information into existing systems or Excel templates, where credit exposure and pricing figures are calculated automatically.
The recruitment process also omitted several important aspects of the role. Only after joining was I informed about early and late shifts, 12-hour days during periods of market stress, the expectation to publish my private mobile number on Microsoft Teams and to remain reachable during annual leave. Had these aspects been communicated beforehand, I would have withdrawn my application.
Interessante Aufgaben
Applicants with a strong background in mathematics should carefully consider whether this role matches their expectations: Typical tasks included reconciling SAP and trading system postings, updating SQL tables, carrying out routine reporting based on predefined queries and preparing liquidity planning reports. The credit risk related tasks largely consisted of entering deal information into existing systems or Excel templates and obtaining automatically calculated exposure and pricing figures.
While I would not rule out the possibility that this position may be intellectually rewarding for people who take pride in their PhDs in statistics, numerical analysis, scientific computing, or mathematical modelling in the natural sciences, anyone with a serious background in pure or theoretical mathematics—particularly someone holding a PhD or a master's degree from a prestigious university—is likely to find the work intellectually barren, profoundly unsatisfying, and ultimately depressing.