Vice President, Trade Surveillance

Do you want your voice heard and your actions to count?

Discover your opportunity with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), one of the world’s leading financial groups. Across the globe, we’re 150,000 colleagues, striving to make a difference for every client, organization, and community we serve. We stand for our values, building long-term relationships, serving society, and fostering shared and sustainable growth for a better world.

With a vision to be the world’s most trusted financial group, it’s part of our culture to put people first, listen to new and diverse ideas and collaborate toward greater innovation, speed and agility. This means investing in talent, technologies, and tools that empower you to own your career.

Join MUFG, where being inspired is expected and making a meaningful impact is rewarded.

OVERVIEW OF THE DEPARTMENT/SECTION

The Core Compliance department at MUFG plays a critical role in safeguarding the integrity and reputation of the investment bank. It is responsible for ensuring that the firm operates within the framework of applicable laws, regulations, and internal policies.

Within Core Compliance, the EMEA Surveillance Department works closely with sales, trading and business units to identify and manage market abuse risks, executes a comprehensive trade and communication surveillance programme, and promotes a culture of ethical conduct and accountability.

Our Trade Surveillance coverage includes sales and trading activities across multiple asset classes and financial markets within our London Bank and Securities businesses and similar businesses in other EMEA countries. Communications Surveillance covers the UK population and certain EMEA and other overseas operations which affect EMEA business.

NUMBER OF DIRECT REPORTS

None

MAIN PURPOSE OF THE ROLE 

The primary purpose of this role is detecting, monitoring, analysing and investigating trading activities of MUFG and its clients to identify possible violations of market abuse regulatory requirements and MUFG trading and compliance policies. In particular, this involves investigating alert referrals submitted by the Level 1 (L1) offshore surveillance team or escalations from the Front Office, ensuring that each case is assessed promptly and thoroughly. You will be responsible for identifying potential indicators of market abuse and escalating cases where appropriate, including those that may lead to the submission of Suspicious Transaction or Order Reports (STORs) to the regulator.

In addition, this role will play an important role in the optimisation of the trade surveillance programme, including delivering testing and calibration exercises of surveillance alerts, identifying and coordinating with our surveillance system vendors to develop new alerts, implementing solutions to increase efficiencies, and supporting and developing the L1 offshore surveillance team.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• In respect of vendor based automated surveillance or EUC alerts, reviewing and investigating all referrals made by the offshore L1 team; documenting and analysing all relevant information to determine if any concerns of suspicious activity merit escalation to the Trade Surveillance Senior Manager and EMEA Head of Surveillance.
• Working collaboratively with the L1 team, overseeing the quality of alert disposition and providing feedback to support training efforts. In addition, assisting with refresher training modules and any new alert-scenarios that are added to the suite of alerts.
• Conducting specific sample-based quality assurance testing of the L1 team alert closures to ensure adequacy, completeness and effectiveness.
• Playing a leading role in the annual calibration and backtesting review process, contributing to the analysis of results and recommendations for parameter changes that could improve the effectiveness of the overall trade surveillance framework.
• Supporting the delivery of the annual Market Conduct Risk Assessment and being able to effectively engage with the Front Office succinctly over matters of market abuse risk behaviours, to determine appropriate inherent risk ratings.
• Displaying the ability to draft coherent and effective management action plans in order to remediate issues and gaps in the control framework arising from internal audits.
• Ensuring that internal policies and procedures are updated accurately and appropriately in accordance with any changes to the surveillance framework.
• Supporting the training of the L1 team in new products/platforms and market abuse risk typologies, specifically how these will impact alert disposition and the wider surveillance framework.
• Conducting regular analysis of alert/referral patterns and escalation trends to identify emerging risks, behavioural anomalies, and potential market abuse issues.
• Assisting with project work involving the automated trade surveillance systems, specifically alert development, UAT design, testing and sign-off. Supporting other members of the Surveillance team with these tasks as necessary.
• Demonstrating a deep understanding of financial markets, covering major asset classes such as equities, fixed income, foreign exchange, repos, and derivatives—including but not limited to futures, swaps, options and structured products.
• Having a comprehensive knowledge of relevant regulations and international standards, supporting MUFG's adherence to MiFID II, MAR, FX Global Code, Volcker Rule, amongst others.
• Being responsible for the extraction, review and analysis of transaction data from source systems in relation to manual FX surveillance. This includes identifying opportunities to automate any manual surveillance processes.
• Maintaining a positive working relationship with external surveillance system vendors and being a key contact for any incident management, development work and other strategic priorities.
• Build relationships with wider Compliance, the Front Office teams and Technology in respect of escalation of issues including collating of evidence and supporting rationale.
• Use automated communications surveillance systems to identify relevant communications between transaction participants and staff to enhance the investigation of trade surveillance referrals.
• Assist in the preparation of management information for periodic Compliance reports to senior management and wider committees.
• Ensure that the second line Compliance staff act as an independent challenge to the front office, escalating any concerns about breaches of law, regulation or internal policies.
• Assisting in the planning and deliver of the Surveillance Team’s annual objectives, the supervision of the L1 team, and supporting the Trade Surveillance Senior Manager / EMEA Head of Surveillance in the delivery of the department’s and wider Compliance Divisions objectives.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Essential:

• Minimum of 6 years of practical experience in a trade surveillance function within an investment banking environment.
• Experience in executing and managing detailed market abuse enquiries and investigations

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Functional / Technical Competencies:

Essential

• In-depth knowledge and expertise of the UK / EU Market Abuse Regulation, other relevant global regulations (e.g., MiFID II, Dodd Frank Act) and relevant FCA regulatory requirements and expectations on market abuse surveillance programmes.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of UK and EU financial markets across major asset classes (including equities, fixed income, FX, and derivatives (options, futures, swaps, structured products)), trading behaviours and market abuse typologies.
• Familiarity with surveillance technologies and optimization techniques.

Preferred:

• Proficiency with trade surveillance platforms such as KX, Nasdaq SMARTS, or similar automated tools.
• Experience in data analytics or automation to enhance surveillance effectiveness.

Education / Qualifications:

Essential

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Business Administration, or a related field.

Preferred:

• Advanced degree (e.g., MBA) or professional certifications such as CFA, CAMS, or ICA.

PERSONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Excellent communication skills
• Results driven, with a strong sense of accountability
• A proactive, motivated approach.
• The ability to operate with urgency and prioritise work accordingly
• Strong decision making skills, the ability to demonstrate sound judgement
• A structured and logical approach to work
• Strong problem solving skills
• A creative and innovative approach to work
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• The ability to manage large workloads and tight deadlines
• Excellent attention to detail and accuracy
• A calm approach, with the ability to perform well in a pressurised environment
• Strong numerical skills
• Excellent Microsoft Office skills

We are open to considering flexible working requests in line with organisational requirements.

MUFG is committed to embracing diversity and building an inclusive culture where all employees are valued, respected and their opinions count. We support the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion in recruitment and employment, and oppose all forms of discrimination on the grounds of age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy and maternity, race, gender reassignment, religion or belief and marriage or civil partnership.

We make our recruitment decisions in a non-discriminatory manner in accordance with our commitment to identifying the right skills for the right role and our obligations under the law.