About CLS:
CLS is the trusted party at the centre of the global FX ecosystem. Utilized by thousands of counterparties, CLS makes FX safer, smoother and more cost effective. Trillions of dollars’ worth of currency flows through our systems each day.
Created by the market for the market, our unrivalled global settlement infrastructure reduces systemic risk and provides standardization for participants in many of the world’s most actively traded currencies. We deliver huge efficiencies and savings for our clients: in fact, our approach to multilateral netting shrinks funding requirements by over 96% on average, so clients can put their capital and resources to better use.
CLS products are designed to enable clients to manage risk most effectively across the full FX lifecycle – whether through more efficient processing tools or market intelligence derived from the largest single source of FX executed data available to the market.
Our ambition to make a positive difference starts with our people. Our values underpin everything that we do at CLS and define our working environment:
- Pivotal purpose
- Trusted guardian
- Targeted innovation
- Facilitate connections
- Delivering excellence
- Inclusive culture
Job information:
- Functional title – Assistant Vice President, Crisis Management
- Department – Enterprise Resilience
- Corporate level – Assistant Vice President
- Report to – Director, Crisis Management
- Location - London
What you will be doing:
CLS, as a systemically important Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI), has a strong and demonstrable history of resilience, underpinned by its ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover from operational & technology, financial, and market-related disruptions. This resilience is closely linked to the mature and well-established crisis management capability, which provides a structured and disciplined approach to managing and maintaining the continuity and integrity of its services.
The role exists within the crisis management team to support the Director – Crisis Management in maintaining and strengthening CLS’s crisis management capability. The position plays a key role in ensuring the organization remains prepared to respond effectively to a wide range of FMI-relevant disruption scenarios by embedding crisis readiness across the organization through planning, exercising, and alignment with regulatory expectations applicable to FMIs.
The candidate will be required to interact with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders. Internally, this includes colleagues at all levels of the organization, up to and including Executive management. Externally, interaction with CLS’s Settlement Members, industry bodies, service providers, and other relevant stakeholders during preparedness activities and live crisis events. This will require strong communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills, as well as the ability to operate with credibility, discretion, and composure in high-pressure and time-critical situations.
A proactive, change mindset always thinking how to balance service, risk and investment in the service of the corporate strategy.
The candidate will:
- Support the development and execution of the governance, strategy, performance measure and levels of risk mitigation (in line with the CLS Risk Appetite Statement) that should be adopted to support the successful delivery and maintenance of the Crisis Management framework.
- Engage with Compliance and Regulatory Relations teams to assess any impact to the Crisis Management framework post communicated changes to regulations.
- Assist with the preparation and delivery of any ad-hoc session requested by the Board and/or OC relating to the Crisis Management framework or Criss events
- Co-ordinate the Crisis Steering Committee ensuring that meetings are scheduled, and materials are provided on time and of the expected quality.
- Co-ordinate the Crisis Management Accreditation Programme ensuring that all accreditation activities are completed as per requirements.
- Support the co-ordination of all crisis management activities across CLS in accordance with the respective requirements.
- Responsible for the maintenance of all Crisis related documentation (Crisis Playbooks, Crisis Manuals, Committee ToR, Training Schedules) ensuring these are regularly reviewed in accordance with the documentation governance standards and updated efficiently as and when required
- Design Crisis War Games, run and delivered as discussion-based tabletop exercises, capturing and covering the extensive range of scenarios that could materialise both internally and externally to CLS, that may impact the CLS ecosystem
- Design Crisis Simulation exercises, run and delivered in the Test environment, ensuring that scenarios are created and manipulated, considering the limitations of the Test environment, to mirror a real-time based event. Identify and engage with the respective teams and co-ordinate and interlock with other activity taking place in the environment.
- Collaborate with other colleagues in Enterprise Resilience, Info Security, Product and Operations teams to design, develop, create and deliver discussion-based table-top exercises covering extreme but plausible scenarios.
- Assist with the co-ordination and delivery of the Crisis Management training schedule ensuring that sessions are delivered within the required timeframes and cover current topics including new services, new products, emerging risks, market issues and existing crisis processes and tools.
- Represent Crisis Management in relevant projects to analyse the risks and potential changes to the Crisis Management framework, crisis tools and any crisis documentation.
- Identify and/or contribute to the design and creation of any new crisis tools and crisis processes delivered to enhance Crisis Management capabilities. Collaborate in the integration and user acceptance testing ahead of them going live.
- Over time perform the Crisis Support role as per requirements during Crisis events. The Crisis Support role provides the Crisis Lead with the deep, highly specialized knowledge and expert insight to support informed decision-making during complex and high-impact crisis events.
- Support the wider Enterprise Resilience exercising programme, covering areas such as business continuity, third party and operational resilience testing.
What we’re looking for:
- Typically, 5+ years’ experience in crisis management, operational resilience, business continuity, incident management, or a closely related discipline within complex, regulated environments
- Demonstrated experience supporting or operating within formal crisis management frameworks, including preparedness, response, and post-incident review activities
- Strong analytical capability with the ability to rapidly assess, produce, and communicate complex information to Senior Management
- Experience designing or facilitating crisis simulations, testing, or scenario-based exercises
- Experience designing and facilitating business continuity and third-party exercises would be an advantage
- Experience designing severe but plausible scenarios for the testing of resilience critical services would be an advantage
- Proven ability to operate effectively under pressure, manage ambiguity, and exercise sound judgement during high-impact and/or prolonged disruption events
- Stakeholder management and communication skills, with experience engaging with regulators, market participants, and critical service providers
- be prepared to support any crisis which may impact CLS 24x7x365 as and when they occur
- proficient research and analysis skills around risks and threats which may impact any of our locations, ranging from environmental, health, terrorist etc.
- ability to problem solve and aim to develop effective and efficient procedures and process
- Understanding of FX products and services with knowledge of the required infrastructure and dependencies.
- Experience working within or supporting a financial market infrastructure, payments, clearing or settlement environment would be beneficial
- Familiarity with CPMI-IOSCO Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI), and Regulation HH, under the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System would be an advantage
Professional qualifications / certifications
Recognized qualifications or specialized training in the following areas will be beneficial:
- Crisis Management
- Business Continuity Management
- Operational Resilience
- Risk Management
- Financial market infrastructure, payments and settlements
- Regulatory compliance
Our commitment to employees:
At CLS, we celebrate inclusion and consider this to be one of our strongest assets. We are committed to fostering an environment in which everyone feels comfortable to be who they are, and inclusion is valued. All employees have access to our inclusive benefits, including:
- Holiday - UK/Asia: 25 holiday days and 3 ‘life days’ (in addition to bank holidays). US: 23 holiday days.
- 2 paid volunteer days so that you can actively support causes within your community that are important to you.
- Generous parental leave policies to ensure you can enjoy valuable time with your family.
- Parental transition coaching programmes and support services.
- Wellbeing and mental health support resources to ensure you are looking after yourself, and able to support others.
- Employee Networks (including our Women’s Forum, Black Employee Network and Pride Network) in support of our organisational commitment to embrace and always be learning more about inclusivity.
- Hybrid working to promote a healthy work/life balance, enabling employees to work collaboratively in the office when needed and work from home when they don’t.
- Active support of flexible working for all employees where possible.
- Monthly ‘Heads Down Days’ with no meetings across the whole company.
- Generous non-contributory pension provision for UK/Asia employees, and 401K match from CLS for US employees.
- Private medical insurance and dental coverage.
- Social events that give you opportunities to meet new people and broaden your network across the organisation.
- Annual flu vaccinations.
- Discounts and savings and cashback across a wide range of categories including health and retail for UK employees.
- Discounted Gym membership – Complete Body Gym Discount/Sweat equity program for US employees.
- All employees have access to Discover – our comprehensive learning platform with 1000+ courses from LinkedIn Learning.
- Access to frequent development sessions on a number of topics to help you be successful and develop your career at CLS.
