Corporate Treasury vs Retail Risk Management between, better, within, about, ideas

Makavelim3

Does anyone have any ideas about the differences between these two departments within a bank? Which might be a better place to be in? I know this is a very general q but just wondering if anyone has any insights. Thanks!

random_walker47

I would go for Corporate Treasury. Once you have "retail" anything on your resume, you tend to get a typecast.

xilinx_altera

There was a guy who used to post on AF called fxguy1794 (or something like that), and he used to do treasury at a F500. He seemed to enjoy it and from what I understand allowed him to transition to trading type roles on the buyside - see if you might be able to get in touch with him.

Swanand

what is the role with treasury - kinda a large group.

ASSet_MANagemen

thanks guys! the thing is im already in corporate treasury and someone from retail risk management withink the same bank has approached me for a job. the job pay levels and titles are very similar and ive already been in this role for a while now, so for me its more about either switching now to retail risk management or trying to switch to another role within the same corporate treasury area.

in treasury the role i do now is modeling customer financial behavior, so building statistical models to analyze how customers prepay or redeem in different interest rate environments. in retail risk management, the role would be also analytical, doing credit adjudication/credit risk for different products, designing business rules for automated underwriting.

the thing is what i do in treasury is kind of unique and plus my background is more statistical although i do have a major in economics as well, most of my experience has been doing statistical work, so i dont konw how easy it would be to switch internally within corporate treasury


any advice? thanks in advance!

cjs238

Hi jimjohn,

I think we have a somewhat similar although mirrored position. I am currently working in retail risk management and thinking about switching to Treasury (Sales).

As according to my experience, a quant's role in retail risk usually involves analysis of portfolio dynamics and trends, as well as setting up proper reporting and forecasting tools. As you mentioned that you would be setting rules for automated underwriting, this requires quite a lot of data filtering&analysis. For this I believe it is crucial to get at least a basic understanding of the lending process and credit policy. Retail risk management role is essentially about proper portfolio management combined with credit policy rules.

If you appreciate the sort of "glamour" the corporate world brings with, do not expect this in Retail area. Retail rarely gets as much management attention as Corporate and the salaries are often substantially lower than at a comparable position in Corporate, not to mention bonuses. It gets interesting when you get to a management position, as in many countries (at least in Europe) there is more demand for skillful retail risk managers than supply currently.

Hope this will somewhat help.

tikfed

thanks a lot mihau! just noticed this now. i ended up not pursuing the retail risk management position and after reading your comments, im glad i did.