Area of work
Sales, Equity Derivatives (EQD)
Studied
Finance, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Joined
2006 - One year work placement, 2008 - Graduate traineeship
Working in
Hong Kong
There are two main parts to my job in EQD Sales. My primary role is selling products to clients and my secondary role is after-sales client service, which involves reporting to the client on the performance of the product and commenting on variations between the forecast and actual performance.
I work with many different people throughout the bank, but especially the Trading and Structuring teams. We also regularly talk to people in our other offices around the world, mainly New York, Paris and London. For example, we'll usually discuss our hybrid structures, which cover different asset classes, with our colleagues in Paris because they specialise in these structures. They also have a more global remit and may be better placed to check all the different underlying assets that we don't normally deal with.
As for our clients, in my team we have a mainly Taiwanese client base and handle many different kinds of equity indexes and funds for them - everything really except for interest and credit rates. Clients can be very demanding and don't always understand what is going on in the markets and why products are performing as they are, so they come to us for an explanation. We have to run the numbers and explain in a logical way to them why things are happening and what we can do to solve it. My supervisor helps me a lot in these types of situations. She's from Taiwan originally and has been an enormous help to me, not only teaching me the financial side of the business, but also in explaining ways of communicating and selling what we can do for our clients.
My team is from many different countries, but this seems to be a bonus rather than a disadvantage. We learn a lot from each other about different cultures and different ways of communicating. I often go out for lunch or dinner with my boss and the people from structuring and trading, or I might meet up with some of my other friends from work in different areas of the bank. Although we usually go somewhere near the office and eat Japanese or Western food, we don't talk about business during the meal, just chitchat.
I've obviously learned a lot about the financial markets since I've been here, but I also really value the other skills that I've picked up: communication techniques, problem-solving methods, the best way to propose an idea to a client and then follow through and close the deal. These are all important new skills I'm learning and will be really valuable throughout my career, wherever it takes me.
I am the first graduate that BNP Paribas has ever recruited in Hong Kong, and there have obviously been some challenges as the office adapts to the graduate programme and gets used to having graduates around. But I think that it's a great opportunity and more people in Hong Kong need to know about it as the program grows. The focus here is on practical skills and knowledge. Instead of sitting in endless training courses - which is nothing like learning first hand - very early on you get great exposure to the industry and learn how to deal with real cases.
