THE FIRST QUESTION · THE BANK · RATE SENSITIVITY
A bank holds government bonds at amortised cost, on the basis that it will hold them to maturity. Rates have risen, and it now needs cash.
// ← EVERY SEATTHE FUNCTIONS
Every floor · The machinery
Product Controller
Independently verifies what the trading and banking books earned, and why.
BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
// 01 — WHAT A PRODUCT CONTROLLER DOES
The daily job is profit and loss: explaining the move, reconciling it to positions and market data, and challenging anything the desk cannot account for. It sits between the front office and finance deliberately, which makes it a seat where you are expected to disagree with people who earn more than you.
// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE
Accounting and finance graduates, often as a first seat, and a common springboard into markets, risk or finance leadership.
// 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.
- 01The desk's P&L moved and nobody can explain it. What do you do?
- 02What is a P&L attribution, and what does it catch?
- 03How would you value something with no observable price?
- 04The trader says your number is wrong. How do you handle it?
- 05Why does the bank pay someone to check its own traders?
- 06What would make you escalate rather than investigate further?
What the panel is listening for. Whether you will hold a position under pressure from a confident person, and whether your challenge comes with a reconciliation attached.
The finance, technology and operations quiz has no question for this seat yet. Its five were asked for the software engineer, financial accountant, operations analyst, procurement manager and people partner seats, in the same block, and the temperament they score is the one this panel scores too.
Take the quiz →// 04 — ONE QUESTION, WORKED
QThe desk's P&L moved and nobody can explain it. What do you do?
A strong answer decomposes before it asks: the attribution by risk factor, new trades against the existing book, market data checked against an independent source, valuation adjustments and any manual entries. What the attribution cannot explain is the number to chase — reconciled to positions, then taken to the desk with the residual already sized. Above a threshold it is escalated whether or not the trader has a story, because an unexplained move is a control failure until it is explained.
A weak one asks the trader, accepts the explanation, and books it — which is the outcome the seat exists to prevent.
The seat is judged on whether you will hold a position under pressure from a confident person who earns more than you, and whether your challenge arrives with a reconciliation attached. The habit — never accept a number without knowing what it is made of — is the one that separates a real credit read from a summary of the borrower's accounts, and Issue 07 is the file where reported and underlying profit part company.
START HERE · Issue 07 — profit up, cash down
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.
1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM
4 MORE ON THE BANK · RATE SENSITIVITY →WHERE DO YOU READ FROM? THE PLACEMENT →
// ALSO IN THE FUNCTIONS
- Financial accountant
- Regulatory reporting analyst
- Treasury analyst
- Software engineer
- Cyber security analyst
- Data scientist
- Business analyst
- Operations analyst
- Legal counsel
- People partner
- Marketing manager
- Procurement manager
The whole board, and how the four blocks fit together, is on what jobs banks hire for.
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