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Originally Posted by jenjen1
I have been shortlisted for the second interview of both roles mentioned above and would like to seek some advice in the above roles. For myself, I have been looking out on corporate treasury or risk related roles in banks/finance companies as I have an interest in these area but there are minimal openings available for entry level positions. In this case, which role would be more beneficial to add on to my work experience or to kickstart my career?
Both roles are doing settlements and reconciliation related. For the Treasury role at a MNC, it is not a finance company but rather semiconductor/tech company. The job scope should touch on on cash management as well and working with China counterparts. However, despite being a big company, I'm afraid that there isn't much advancement in the job since it is not a bank/finance company and if I were to consider future treasury roles at a bank, it may not be as relevant. Whereas for the ops role at a bank, it is doing trade settlements for FX and possible advancement includes rotating between roles within the division for transaction related operations role i.e. middle office operations. However, I'm afraid that there isn't any transferable skills and will be stuck in this role forever.
As I have yet to receive any offer, I can't really comment on the salary part but as of what I know, both jobs seem to have pretty long working hours and both requires to work during public holiday. In terms of staff benefits such as annual leave, it seems like bank offers better compensation based on online reviews.
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Tl;dr - Do not do ops in a bank
Within any bank, ops pays the lowest, is the least prestigious and usually has the most OT. Lowest pay because it's a cost center, so management views it as a necessary evil... something the bank cannot do without, but nevertheless should be kept to a minimum. Being a cost center, when a bank decides to cut costs, ops is usually the first to be hit. When it comes to bonuses, front office staff will get allocated first and ops picks up the scraps. OT is high in ops as well, because banks have SLAs that promise quick turnaround times, sometimes even same-day processing. So RM can close a sale at 6pm, throw it to ops to do the legwork and due diligence and ops staff must finish before they can go home. Ops work is boring and routine, much of it is simply data entry, eyeball checking and processing transactions. There is no future in such work and as a result, poor career progression and opportunities. What's worse is many banks are looking to automate away much of these work, so you are at risk of being made redundant in the next 10-20 years. If you're a young worker with a long runway... please think twice.
Although the Treasury role is not at a finance company, it's still an MNC, and MNCs have complex financial needs (e.g. hedging FX risk, cash management/pooling, trade finance etc.) so scope for learning is wide, plus as a Treasury staff at a corporate, you are the customer so you will be served by the banks. At a bank, you will be at the other end of the relationship and subject to the demands of the customer, regardless if you're front office RM or back office ops. Most Corporate Treasury roles involve some degree of decision-making and strategy formulation. For example, choosing which banks to purchase FX contracts from so as to minimise costs. Also, weighing between spot, futures and options contracts. In the domain of trade finance, choosing whether to use a letter of credit (LC) to hedge against counterparty risk and whether to confirm the LC to further hedge against issuing bank risk and country risk. These are just a couple of bread-and-butter decisions that Corporate Treasury handles on a regular basis. Overall, there is more to learn and the work is more challenging and stimulating than an ops role in a bank.
Pay-wise, depends on many factors. But generally speaking, the larger and more international the company, the better the pay, whether bank or corporate. So big foreign banks like JPM, GS, HSBC, Citi, Stanchart usually pay better for the same role compared to the 3 local banks. Similarly, Treasury roles in MNCs pay better than in SMEs. Also higher pay if the company is a finance, commodities or trading firm. At entry-level, even if the bank ops job pays better than the Treasury role, it will lose out in 3-5 years due to poor progression in ops.
Choose ops only if you can see yourself doing the same few tasks day in day out for a very very long time (fyi, nothing against them but most bank ops departments are filled with aunties who have been at it for decades).... and that's assuming your job doesn't get taken over by programming code or a robot....