Corporate Action Specialist - Sandton - JSE Limited

Description

Job Category: Banking, Finance, Insurance. Stockbroking

Contract Type: Permanent

Remuneration: Market Related

Equal Employment Opportunity: Yes

About Our Company:

The JSE recognizes that its success and strength depend on the quality of its employees. We are committed to fostering a culture of continuous learning and high standards of performance.

Our employee wellness programme is designed to encourage work-life balance for employees. We naturally seek to empower staff and encourage diversity and opportunities for all.

Job Summary:

To interpret company announcements and ensure that the quality of the trading and corporate actions reference data is high, across all JSE markets and into the various JSE reference data systems, to underpin and support the ability of the rest of the JSE and the South African market to process accurately.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide strategic thinking and contributions to crafting of departmental business plan based on professional knowledge and experience, to ensure delivery of focus areas for the year in support of departmental strategy.
• Apply cost effectiveness principles in planning and delivery to contribute to achievement of divisional financial targets.
• Provide input into the formalisation for the divisional budget.
• Manage allocated budget by tracking costs.
• Ensure systems, products or projects delivered contributes to improve client/JSE service by providing input on budgets, resources required, and process based on the understanding of costs, business objectives and relationship with external suppliers and stakeholders.
• Contribute to crafting of departmental business plan to ensure delivery of focus areas for the year in support of divisional annual strategy.
• Contribute to the overall JSE revenue and business objectives by providing quality and professional services to clients and therefore adhering to the agreed SLA (Service Level Agreement).
• Craft annual planning of individual deliverables as per performance agreement to enable progress to plan tracking on a continuous basis, which will ensure contribution to the overall divisional service delivery.
• Oversee team operational activities and ensure quality assurance of outputs and deliverables by reviewing standards in accordance with the rules, regulations and guidelines of the JSE.
• Ensure delivery of outputs that will contribute to the overall success of the JSE through meeting business requirements, following best practices and ensuring that outputs are in adherence to the industry standards and procedures.

Stakeholder Relationship Management:

• Build strategic JSE / Industry/ Global network of thought leaders and relationships utilising social media, attending and presenting at conferences and training interventions.
• Develop working relationship with stakeholders and relevant internal teams and demonstrate up to date understanding of their requirements through various methods of interaction and communication to ensure that deliverables are in line with the quality as per agreed objective.
• Gage stakeholder satisfaction through 360 feedback reports, regular engagement and ad-hoc feedback which will include any positive or negative feedback received from the stakeholders regarding the professionalism and timeous nature of interaction.
• Build strategic and sustainable working relationships with internal and external stakeholders through constructive engagements.
• Interact with others in a way that promotes openness and trust and gives them confidence in one's intentions.
• Act as the liaison person with South African Revenue Service (SARS) representing JSE clients on Tax related matters applicable to the processing of Corporate Actions.
• Apply knowledge of the Income Tax act to ensure correct accounting and tax reporting by JSE regulated Intermediaries and ultimate investors applicable to the processing of Corporate Actions.
• Provide focused customer service by proactively learning and understanding the business of all JSE stakeholders to be able to respond to their queries with insight and more value-add.
• Ensure that external stakeholders receive 100% accurate reference data through quality assurance, ultimately ensuring correct investment decisions are made by end investors.
• Resolve any complex Corporate Action queries and queries escalated from clients and/or the client Service Centre that arise from the interpretation and processing of the data.

Process Management:

• Manage own delivery against agreed delivery plan and set timelines, identify obstacles to delivery and take appropriate action where required.
• Analyse financial statements and corporate actions relating to listed companies by interpreting the various data sources to decide on how the given data must be processed.
• Quality assures the capturing of trading, corporate actions and instrument reference data for all JSE markets by verifying that it is done and in line with the interpretation of data, to ensure data integrity.
• Interpret the announcements accurately by allocating data into the correct fields on the applicable systems to ensure that the instrument reference data is reliable, and that market participants and investors can make informed investment decision.
• Conduct starts of day and end of day audit checks by running pre-defined reports, noting exceptions and taking corrective action and/or escalate where necessary to have correct data for end users.
• Perform system test scenarios by understanding downstream system implications and documenting of actions as well as writing of procedures to follow and consult with the Corporate Actions Manager and/or Team Lead regarding recommended enhancements.
• Define business system requirements and submit them to the Corporate Actions Manager/Team Lead to develop relevant systems for data interpretation.
• Train and coach junior team members on daily operational processes and other internal staff on the global understanding of corporate action events, their impact on other business areas and any relevant areas to ensure understanding.
• Respond to client queries by utilizing expert knowledge of information of the company announcements to provide expert advice in continuation of business operations.
• Understand customer needs by proactively learning and understanding the business of main clients to be able to respond to them effectively which will assist in answering customer queries with greater insight.
• Perform quality assurance of trading and instrument reference data across all the JSE markets to ensure accurate information is communicated to stakeholders.
• Quality assures the accurate capturing of Company Headline earnings declarations, rolling four quarters calculations and annual processes as performed by team members to ensure correct statistic calculations are disseminated to stakeholders.
• Manage the end-to-end process of issuing, maintaining and reporting of instrument ISO codes (ISINs, FISN and CFI codes) issued for listed and unlisted instruments.
• Identify production issues through on-going monitoring and tracking against the business objectives and either resolve independently or otherwise escalate critical issues timeously for resolution.
• Assist the technical system support teams by investigating and correcting data discrepancies for end of day batch errors or abends.
• Identify obstacles and major challenges through continuous review of processes and standards to ensure effective operational alignment to strategic priorities.
• Make decision about best practice through comparing data from different sources to draw conclusions; using effective approaches for choosing a course of action or developing appropriate solutions; taking action that is consistent with available facts, constraints, and probable consequences; liaising with management and relevant stakeholders as and when required.
• Perform complex calculations on escalated queries by applying technical expertise to provide reliable trading and corporate actions reference data for decision-making.
• Continuous focus on resilient operations by reviewing processes and procedures on a continuous basis and suggest potential improvements and automation and update process and procedural documentation for critical processes and selected non-critical processes.
• Quality assures the Market Notices and communication to external stakeholders by reviewing the documents taking into consideration JSE standards to mitigate incorrect communication that might result in financial, legal or reputational risks.
• Attend to ad-hoc duties and responsibilities as assigned by manager in continuation of business and increased productivity.
• Provide input to the JSE Business Continuity team on scope for Remote Disaster Recovery testing to prove systems readiness against the Business Continuity (BC) plan.
• Act as back-up to the Corporate Action Manager Team Lead in his/her absence to ensure continued business operations.
• Improve personal capability and professional growth relating to field of expertise, in line with JSE objectives by discussing development needs and proposed solutions with management.
• Keep abreast of changes in legislation or standards by conducting research and utilising networks.
• Upskill team and other professionals by sharing knowledge and research results.

Minimum Qualifications:

• A post-graduate degree in Financial Markets is preferred.
• 5 – 7 years working experience having worked in a Corporate Actions department/environment.

Knowledge and Skills Required:

• Administrative procedures and systems.
• Basic software applications (e.g., Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, Internet, Email).
• Divisional service offerings.
• Knowledge of the JSE listings requirements.
• In-depth knowledge of corporate actions processing in the stock broking industry.
• Adapting behaviour to meet major changes at work.
• Building and maintaining effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

Language: English (en)