Risk jobs in banking now: "Depressed people doing non-jobs to placate the regulator"
I work in risk management for a major bank. It's a job that I'm good at and that I have enjoyed. I get a buzz from working with traders and from being close to the trading floor.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
The risk function is changing, though. As banks seek to automate as much as they can and to cut costs, they're offshoring or near-shoring as much as they can and using inexperienced button pushers instead of skilled risk professionals.
I see it first hand. The bank I work for was reprimanded by the regulator in the recent past and is now paranoid. As a result, it has gone completely over the top with its risk and controls team which now employs hundreds of people who make almost no difference.
Most of them have almost nothing of value to do. They are employed in non-jobs flapping around the edges in the semblance of doing something worthwhile.
For example, the bank has a system that generates a lot of alerts which are unnecessary and designed in a panic. These alerts do nothing to really drill down into traders' behaviours and are just there to make it seem like risk is on top of things. When an alert - which is almost always meaningless - is triggered, people must investigate it. They never find anything, but this is because the alert was meaningless in the first place. It's just red tape.
It is a massive exercise in appearing to do something. Banks are petrified of regulatory action and are therefore engaged in ass covering. The hundreds of people who do these spend 10-15 minutes investigating each alert, in the full knowledge that it's pointless. None of them know anything about markets. None of them really understand what they're looking at, and none of them are able to identify what's really important anyway.
Most of them are depressed. They understand that their jobs are pointless and repetitive, but they keep doing them because they won't get paid as much elsewhere. For banks though, the people are a cheap solution until AI takes over. It's pretty bleak.
Dillon Wells is a pseudonym
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libellous (in which case it won’t.)
