South Africa Standard Bank Graduate Programme (Risk)

Risk is becoming an increasingly important element in our banking businesses and our risk teams play a key role in every decision we make to service our clients across all our product lines.

On our 18-month risk programme, you’ll spend time in a number of specialist risk teams, including:

Credit risk

With the banking industry shifting to an economic capital business philosophy and the evolution of sophisticated derivative markets, risk management has become enormously complex and increasingly professional. Credit risk management is crucial in understanding the nature and quality of our counterparties as well as their concentrations in terms of industry and country.

We partner the business to understand credit risk so we can apply appropriate pricing to optimise the bank’s risk-adjusted return. This involves understanding and assessing a range of risk areas including credit, financial, economic, legal, political, regulatory, environmental and reputational risks. Join us and you’ll enjoy direct, dynamic and stimulating exposure to all the key businesses and transactions at the heart of CIB’s expertise.

Credit analytics

In this area you’ll gain a range of experience, including the use of simulation techniques of market risk drivers using stochastic processes. This will enable you to derive the credit exposure profile of trading book instruments and other types of risk that interlink with credit risk, such as wrong-way risk.

You’ll also be exposed to the development of ratings models that determine PD (Probability of Default), EAD (Exposure at Default) and LGD (Loss Given Default) credit risk parameters for the banking book portfolio, taking both quantitative and qualitative factors into account. And you’ll learn how to evaluate the regulatory capital held by the bank on its credit risk and its sensitivity to changing market conditions, using stress testing techniques and focusing on PD, LGD and EAD.

Market risk

In market risk we keep an eye on what our business units are doing, as well as watching areas such as equity, bond and commodity prices, currency exchange rates, interest rates, volatilities and credit spreads. This helps us to understand the risk we face as a business and to ensure we meet our statutory market requirements.

Join this team and you’ll develop your knowledge of the global markets and relevant financial instruments to assess the risks that our business is exposed to in the world’s financial markets.

Global Markets Credit

We’re the main link between the trading floor (global markets) and the credit risk division. This involves working with traders to help them manage credit risk, as well as helping the credit teams understand the traders’ requirements, products and risk methodologies.

What you’ll need

To join this programme, you’ll need to be a South African citizen in the final year of a postgraduate degree, or a graduate with no more than a year’s work experience. If you’re highly numerate, with an understanding of risk and finance, all the better. We’re particularly interested in hearing from people with a degree in economics, finance, mathematics, actuarial science or any similar studies. Applications for the programme close on Friday 17 August 2012.

Apply online