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// ← EVERY SEATTHE FRONT LINE

Ground floor · The hall

Markets Salesperson

Sells the bank's markets products — foreign exchange, interest rate hedging, commodities — to corporate and institutional clients.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// 01 — WHAT A MARKETS SALESPERSON DOES

The day is the market's day: prices, positions, and clients who need to hedge an exposure or take a view before something moves. The product is risk transfer, so the conversation is about what a client is exposed to and what a hedge would and would not do, at speed and usually on the phone.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

Graduate markets streams, internal moves from corporate banking or treasury, and lateral hires with a product following.

// 03 — WHAT THE INTERVIEW ASKS

These are the shapes the round takes, not a question bank — banks phrase them differently and the wording is never the point.

  1. 01What has moved in your market this week, and why?
  2. 02An exporter is unhedged and the currency is against them. What do you say?
  3. 03Explain a forward to someone who has never used one.
  4. 04What is your view on rates, and what would change it?
  5. 05Mental arithmetic, out loud, against a clock.
  6. 06A client loses money on a hedge you sold them. What happens next?

What the panel is listening for. Composure and a changeable mind: a view held with reasons, revised when the reasons change, and expressed fast enough to be useful in a moving market.

Practise the round in the front-line quiz: one of its five questions is this seat's own, and every answer has the senior interviewer's read.

Take the quiz →

// 04 — WHY CREDIT PAYS IN THIS SEAT

A hedge is a credit exposure with the sign reversed — the bank is on risk to the client's ability to pay if the trade goes against them, which is why markets sales has a credit approval behind it.

Selling a hedge well means understanding what the client is hedging, and a client that cannot say which currencies it will be paid in is telling you something about the business, not about the product.

START HERE · Issue 02 — the exporter and its currencies

// 05 — A DAY IN THE SEAT

  1. 07:00The morning meeting: overnight moves, the day's data, the desk's view — and which clients it matters to.
  2. 08:00Calls to the clients with exposures: an exporter unhedged into a moving currency, a borrower with a rate reset coming.
  3. 10:00A forward priced with the trader, and the credit line checked before the deal is done.
  4. 12:00A hedging programme reviewed with the relationship manager: what the client is exposed to, and what a hedge would and would not do.
  5. 14:00A client who lost money on a hedge, and the conversation that decides whether they trade with you again.
  6. 16:30Confirmations, the day's tickets, and the view written down for tomorrow.

The shape of a day, not a rota — banks and books differ. A relationship manager's day is on what a commercial banker does.

// 06 — WHAT THE FIRST YEAR TESTS

  • Whether you know each client's exposures better than they do — which currencies, which dates, which side.
  • Whether you pick up the phone, and whether clients pick up when you call.
  • Whether you can work with the trader — a price you can sell and a risk the desk can hold.
  • Whether you understand that a credit line stands behind every deal, and what a client's balance sheet has to do with it.
  • Whether you can tell a client not to do a trade.

// 07 — WHAT YOU SEE FROM HERE

The corporate client's treasury from inside it — what a business is really exposed to, and how much of that its own finance team has noticed — and the bank's own book, where every client hedge leaves a residual someone has to hold. The seat learns what a client's cash flows look like before the lending desk sees the accounts.

// 08 — THE FILES TO PRACTISE ON

// 09 — WHERE THE SEAT LEADS

Senior sales, a desk head, or the structuring seats that design the hedges sales sells; some move to corporate coverage, to treasury, or to the client side as a treasurer. The seat is measured on the clients who keep calling, which is why the ones who last are the ones whose advice cost them the odd trade.

// 10 — READ BEFORE THE ROUND

THE IN-TRAY · ONE MINUTE

Make the call on one file.

A short file on the ground this page covers. Every option opens with how far it sits from a senior banker’s read.

THE CALL · THE LOAN · HEDGES

An importer with a floating-rate loan fears that rates will rise, and asks about an interest rate swap.

Before it signs, what does it most need to understand?

1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM

6 MORE ON THE LOAN · HEDGES →WHERE DO YOU READ FROM? THE PLACEMENT →

// THE FREE CASE

FREE · NO PURCHASERead one complete case first Case 01 of the interview case pack — Northmark Engineering, the file, the diagnostic and the ninety-second walkthrough — in full, for an email address.10-PAGE PDF · FREE

// ALSO IN THE FRONT LINE

The whole board, and how the four blocks fit together, is on what jobs banks hire for.