Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Operations Processor

🎯 Role Definition

An Operations Processor is a critical back-office professional responsible for accurate and timely processing of transactions, settlements, and operational workflows. This role ensures data integrity, regulatory compliance, and adherence to SLAs while collaborating with trading desks, client services, compliance, and technology teams to resolve exceptions and drive process improvements. The Operations Processor often works with payment systems, custody platforms, trade capture, reconciliations, and reporting tools to support the transaction lifecycle end-to-end.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Operations Assistant / Back Office Administrator
Client Services Representative
Data Entry / Transaction Processor

Advancement To:

Senior Operations Processor / Operations Specialist
Operations Team Lead / Supervisor
Trade Support Analyst

Lateral Moves:

Reconciliation Analyst
Client Onboarding / KYC Analyst
Compliance Operations Associate

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Accurately process high-volume financial transactions (payments, deposits, withdrawals, wire transfers, ACH, checks) and ensure timely settlement within established SLAs while verifying all supporting documentation and system entries.
Manage end-to-end trade lifecycle activities for equities, fixed income, FX, or derivatives as applicable, including trade capture, allocation, affirmation, matching, settlement instruction creation, and exception resolution with internal and external counterparties.
Perform daily reconciliations across cash, securities, and positions between front-office records, custodians, transfer agents and internal ledgers to identify mismatches, investigate root causes, and execute corrective actions.
Monitor settlement fails, breaks, and exceptions; research and escalate unresolved breaks to senior operations, custodians or counterparties, ensuring resolution and documenting remediation steps to prevent recurrence.
Verify and validate customer and counterparty account information, including KYC documentation, signatory authority, and account mandates, in coordination with onboarding and compliance teams to maintain regulatory and internal control standards.
Execute payment runs and wires, ensuring appropriate approvals, dual controls, and verification of beneficiary details to mitigate fraud and operational risk.
Maintain and update transaction processing systems and custodial platforms with accurate trade and account data; perform manual adjustments and journal entries when automated feeds fail or require correction.
Reconcile daily cash movements, liquidity positions and intraday flows; prepare variance analysis and detailed reconciliation reports for finance, treasury and management review.
Support internal and external audit requests by providing documentation, process narratives, exception reports, and remediation plans; implement audit recommendations and control enhancements.
Prepare and deliver periodic operational reports, KPI dashboards, SLA performance metrics and trend analyses to operations managers and stakeholders to support decision-making and continuous improvement.
Investigate and resolve client inquiries related to transaction status, settlement confirmations, account balances and discrepancies with a client-first approach and clear, timely communication.
Enforce and document adherence to regulatory requirements (e.g., AML, OFAC, MiFID II, SEC rules) and internal policies; coordinate with compliance to promptly remediate any regulatory issues identified during processing.
Operate batch processing jobs and overnight cycles, validate successful job completion, diagnose failed jobs, and perform recovery steps or manual processing where appropriate to maintain workflow continuity.
Implement and maintain strong operational controls including segregation of duties, dual approvals, change management documentation, and exception logs to minimize operational risk and ensure data integrity.
Participate in cross-functional change control and release testing for system upgrades, trade flow changes and process automation; create test cases, execute UAT and validate post-deployment results.
Lead root cause analysis for recurring operational issues and collaborate with technology, vendor partners and business owners to design process automation, workflow optimization and error-proofing solutions.
Maintain up-to-date Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), process maps and knowledgebase articles; train and mentor junior operations staff on best practices, escalation paths and audit-ready documentation.
Coordinate with custodians, prime brokers and clearing agents to set up accounts, resolve settlement holds, process corporate actions, and manage entitlements and income posting.
Monitor market events, corporate actions, dividend payments and proxy deadlines to ensure accurate corporate action processing, entitlement elections and client communications.
Manage exception queues and prioritization during periods of high volume or market stress; reallocate resources, escalate critical items and communicate impact to stakeholders to maintain service levels.
Validate and post corporate action elections, corporate reorganizations, and income events to client accounts; reconcile entitlements and resolve breaks arising from agent bank or custodian discrepancies.
Conduct periodic risk and control self-assessments; document control testing results and drive remediation plans with clear timelines and ownership to strengthen the control environment.
Liaise with technology/IT and data teams to improve straight-through processing (STP) rates by enhancing data quality, mapping fields, and reducing manual intervention.
Maintain vendor relationships and manage vendor performance for outsourced back-office functions, ensuring SLAs are met and issues are escalated and resolved promptly.
Support month-end and quarter-end close by providing detailed operational support, reconciliations, and ad-hoc analyses required by Finance and Management.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Transaction processing and settlement systems experience (e.g., DTCC, SWIFT, CHIPS, Fedwire, Clearstream, Euroclear, or local clearing platforms).
Proficiency in trade lifecycle and back-office platforms (e.g., Broadridge, FIS, SimCorp, Charles River, Fidessa, Calypso).
Strong Excel skills including advanced formulas, pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, Power Query and experience building reconciliation templates and dashboards.
Experience with reconciliation engines and straight-through processing (STP) techniques to minimize manual breaks.
Familiarity with payment protocols and formats (SEPA, ISO 20022, MT103/MT202) and ability to validate message flows.
Knowledge of KYC/AML processes, OFAC screening, sanctions checks and regulatory reporting requirements impacting operations.
SQL query skills for ad-hoc data extraction and troubleshooting transaction data; basic scripting familiarity (Python, VBA) is a plus.
Understanding of accounting entries, journal postings, and general ledger impacts related to settlement and corporate actions.
Experience with ticketing and workflow tools (e.g., ServiceNow, JIRA, Remedy) for exception management and incident tracking.
Ability to create, maintain and test Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and participate in UAT/test case development.
Data quality, validation and audit trail best practices to ensure traceability and regulatory compliance.
Familiarity with corporate actions processing, entitlements, income posting and proxy handling.

Soft Skills

Strong attention to detail and commitment to data accuracy under high-volume processing conditions.
Excellent problem solving and analytical skills with the ability to investigate complex breaks and drive timely resolution.
Clear written and verbal communication skills to interact with internal stakeholders, clients and external counterparties.
Time management and prioritization skills to meet SLAs and manage workload peaks during market events or month-end.
Client-focused attitude with diplomacy and professionalism when handling escalations and sensitive account issues.
Collaborative team player who can work cross-functionally with technology, trading, compliance and client services.
Proactive mindset for continuous improvement, process simplification and automation advocacy.
Adaptability and resilience in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment; ability to remain composed under pressure.
Strong organizational skills with the ability to document processes and train others effectively.
Ethical judgment and discretion when handling confidential client and transaction data.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Associate's degree or equivalent in Business, Finance, Accounting, or related field; or equivalent practical experience in operations.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor's degree in Finance, Business Administration, Accounting, Economics, Computer Science or a related discipline.
Relevant certifications (e.g., CAMS, ACAMS, CTP (Certified Treasury Professional), or operational risk certificates) are advantageous.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Finance
Accounting
Business Administration
Economics
Information Systems / Computer Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 1–5 years in operations, transaction processing, trade support, custody or banking operations.

Preferred:

2–4 years of direct experience in financial services operations or back-office processing with demonstrated knowledge of settlement systems, reconciliations, KYC/AML and regulatory controls.
Proven track record of meeting SLAs, reducing breaks through process improvements, and supporting audit and compliance requests.