Assistant Relationship Manager, Trade Finance at SBM Bank

Job Purpose:

The overall responsibility of this role is to develop and grow sustainable economic benefit from a Portfolio of vanilla, Structured Trade and Commodity Finance customers, through effective business development strategies that will ensure SBM Bank Kenya Limited becomes the leading Trade and commodity financing partner.

Key Responsibilities:

Business and Financial (40%)

• Originate and structure business deals by capturing end to end sequence of events and mitigating any possible risks.
• To steer the development and documentation of strategic and business plans for trade finance and ensure timely implementation, monitoring and evaluation of these plans.
• To proactively manage new and existing names within the SME, Corporate, Consumer banking portfolio and ensure growth of the bank’s wallet share.
•  conduct joint calling with RMs / ROs to provide technical product expertise.
• To plan, coordinate and manage trade sales pipelines.
• Develop, onboard and maintain working relationships with various Trade partners with a view of optimizing value to the Bank.
• Support other departments in the Bank by structuring innovative financial transactions to meet the customers’ requirements for Structured Trade
• Tailor and structure various transactions to meet each customer’s unique models

Customer And Markets(20%)

• Identify business opportunities and threats then utilize them to position Trade finance Business for the overall competitive advantage of the Bank, within the stipulated service level agreements.
• Develop wide product knowledge and offerings of the various competitors in the industry to enable development of a competitive product.
• Liaise with other departmental teams in structuring commodity financing transactions, to ensure that customer needs are met in an efficient and timely manner while safeguarding against potential operational risks.
• Work towards achieving targets in line with the Bank’s products and services.
• Providing exceptional service to existing and potential clients in the Bank’s chosen Markets.
• Monitoring of market and competitor activities to collate new information on trade finance trends to facilitate competitive pricing of trade finance products and early tapping of potential businesses.

Operational and Sustainability(20%)

• Maintain product profiles and audit for products and transactions in order to have a readily available database for Bank’s future use.
• Ensuring all trade income is recognized in the relavant GLs without leakages through active participation of auditing various trade finance processes.
• Ensure all customer instructions on Trade instruments are well executed by customers.
• Ensure all exceptions approved by credit/operations on customer instructions are ratified within agreed timelines
• Ensure all formats of instruments issued to clients are approved by legal
• Maintenance of a healthy business environment by ensuring compliance with both internal and external regulatory requirements.
• Work closely with credit, operations, risk, legal and compliance units to ensure effective controls to mitigate against business risks associated with trade finance

Key Competencies/Learning(20%)

• Ensure branch and business teams are trained in trade finance solutions
• Ensuring the operations staff who handle the trade finance documents and transactions are well trained by offering technical support as needed.

Customers of this Position

External:

• All the relevant banks customers majorly Corporates, larger SMES.
• Financial institutions both Local and international, and various underwriters.
• Various Stakeholders in the trade industry including the Collateral Managers
• Various other trade counterparties, including the regulators like ICC, in cases where arbitration is called for.

Internal customers:

• Relationship and Business development Teams
• Trade finance operations department.
• Credit department

Experience, Knowledge; Skills and Experience required for this Role Job Knowledge

• At least 4 years’ experience in a trade finance related environment
• Deep understanding of international Trade and various governing rules. (UCP, ISBP) and other relevant provisions of ICC
• Working Knowledge on structured trade and commodity Financing and Collateral Management.
• A good knowledge of the CBK’s prudential guidelines as pertains to lending
• A good understanding of the Capital Markets; NSE; Central Bank rules and regulations with respect to the various instruments issued or traded through them.
• Strong marketing, negotiating and decision-making skills.
• Ability to perform financial analytics.
• Should be thorough, keen to detail and be quality conscious.
• Good communication and interpersonal skills.
• Intermediate credit skills as well as a good understanding of Corporate/SME

Professional Qualifications:

• Certified Documentary Credit Specialist (CDCS)
• CPA/CPS/AKIB/