Joel Pascoal D'souza

• Oversaw daily operational activities, ensuring smooth execution of Start-of-Day (SOD) and End-of-Day (EOD) checks, including failed trades, unauthorized wires, and reconciliations.
• Acted as primary point of contact for prime brokers, addressing and resolving settlement discrepancies, including issues related to trade date, settlement date, trade matching, and reconciliation.
• Investigated and resolved any trade breaks or settlement issues, working closely with brokers, custodians, and clearing agents to ensure that trades were settled correctly and promptly.
• Identified bottlenecks or inefficiencies in settlement process and collaborated with prime brokers to streamline operations, improving settlement timelines and reducing operational risk.
• Mentored and trained new team members, facilitating their seamless integration into team and improving overall efficiency.
• Implemented cross-training initiatives for existing staff, resulting in enhanced team agility and improved performance during peak periods.
• Collaborated with team to automate manual processes and streamline workflows, resulting in time savings and increased accuracy.
• Involved in implementation of automation system utilizing BluePrism AI to streamline manual trade confirmation process, resulting in time savings of four hours.
• Conducted daily reconciliations of complex accounts between G20, Prime Broker, and Geneva systems, minimizing discrepancies and ensuring accurate reporting.
• Managed month-end and weekly reconciliations, producing timely Net Asset Value (NAV) reports for clients and investors.
• Successfully reconciled trades, cash, and positions across diverse exchange-traded instruments, including Bonds, Equities, and FX Forwards.
• Orchestrated pre-settlement trade reconciliation processes, preventing trade failures and minimizing market risk.
• Coordinated trade cancellations and amendments through both manual and CTM (OMGEO) trade confirmation systems.
• Verified the accurate processing of corporate actions, collaborating with Prime Brokers and external sources like Bloomberg.
• Calculated and negotiated FX netting for trades settling away from the Prime Broker, minimizing currency risk.
• Facilitated SWIFT wire transfers between client accounts, efficiently managing margin transfers, fees, and fund subscriptions.
• Investigated and resolved breaks in client and Prime Broker accounts, liaising with Fund Managers and Prime Brokers to ensure accurate reporting.
• Prepared comprehensive month-end reports, reconciling with Prime Broker statements, and presenting month-end NAV packs for client approval.
• Generated daily Management Information System (MIS) reports, providing top management with insights for decision-making and problem resolution.
• Participated in User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for various projects, identifying and addressing bugs before project launches.
• Contributed to successful new client launches, ensuring a seamless transition and alignment with client expectations.
• Expertly handled client queries concerning daily and monthly Profit & Loss (P&L), delivering accurate information and maintaining client satisfaction.
• Managed auditors' queries and took charge of finalizing month-end packs and monthly NAV calculations.

Skills Utilized: Operations Management, Team Leadership, Training and Onboarding, Reconciliation, Trade Settlement, Process Automation, Client Communication, Project Launches, Problem Solving, SWIFT Wire Transfers, Corporate Actions, FX Netting, UAT, Process Improvement, BluePrism AI tool

Fixed Income Entitlements: The team’s role is to onboard external clients and internal users to a variety of third party and internal platforms and applications related to E-commerce, and to manage entitlements for those users. The team covers London and New York hours supporting Fixed Income and Equity markets, and is functionally split on regional lines.

Key Responsibilities:

• Participating in / responding to periodic entitlement audit inquiries and reviews.
• Producing metrics/reporting of work done by the team, and data integrity are all functions of this position. Maintain procedures database for reference.
• Using the report generation tool to generate/distribute business critical reports in response to business requests.
• Liaising with clients’ sales coverage and with vendors to remediate any issues related to client/product setup.
• Taking corrective measures for any trade flow issues resulting from incorrect setup and following up with the relevant IT groups to resolve any technical issues.
• Maintaining documentation related to client account setup on electronic trading and research platforms.
• Proactively explore new ideas and suggestions to improve current processes and formulate new ones when new products come on board.
• To generate/distribute business critical MIS reports in response to business requests.

Key responsibilities:

• Adding/Modifying/Deleting any requests that a client wish to from their Demand Deposit Account.
• Set up/Update more than 30 financial products and 100 plus financial sub products on client’s Demand Deposit Account.
• Creating Error, Fine and Losses deck to analysis the errors happened for every previous month.
• Ensure that systematic queue’s is zeroed well before the deadline time.
• Being a 100% SME in the process have to attend management calls with product heads based in Tampa to understand the new product or any change in the product and then trained the rest of the team on the same.
• Responsibility to handle all the critical and big projects with 100% accuracy and within the deadline.
• Observing the training requirements of the team & coordinating with the management to help enhance the learning curve of the team.
• Coordinating with the Donor Location in Tampa & assisting them in any business-related issues.
• Handling escalations or any rush request on a priority basis.