Sums worth billions of euros, high-paced work and errors that may cost a lot do not scare this team – on the contrary, this motivate them to delve deeper into their processes and innards of the bank. Large Corporates & Institutions (LC&I) services at Danske Bank is a family of 450 employees who are responsible for providing financial services to the bank’s largest clients. According to the Lead of this area in Lithuania, Giedre Geciauskiene, this job is full of challenges, but successful LC&I services professionals are viewed as valuable assets in the market.

The clients of the LC&I services are large companies and financial institutions in Denmark and other European countries. Smooth services are provided through various financial tools by the Danske Bank staff, whose areas of responsibility can be divided into several categories.

“Approximately one fifth of our colleagues are payment specialists who work with various markets and make payments in the relevant currencies. Another fifth of our teams provide daily banking services that support our customer in managing cash flows and trade finance. The remaining three fifths of the employees are financial market service specialists, who are responsible for the post-trade services of various financial instruments and ensuring that all the financial transactions of our clients are carried out smoothly and on time,” says Giedre, explaining her team’s complex operations. 

She noted that the members of LC&I teams must feel comfortable working with large volumes of money, because this entails great responsibility. Although such dynamic, high-responsibility work is not for everyone, those professionals who are able to thrive in this environment are valued both inside and outside the organisation. Last year, LC&I services markets teams were recognised by Prospera customer survey as the team that provides the best post-trade service in the Nordic region. 

“Our work can be explained by a simple example. Imagine that a client operating in Europe is interested in acquiring a company or factory in the United States of America and the deal is due to be wrapped up by the end of the day. The client might have bought US dollars for this purpose and also probably have made hedging transactions. Our duty is to ensure that all the related transactions are carried out successfully, the funds are sent on time to where the customer expects to receive them, and the client can complete the transaction smoothly and on time. Consider this is Friday, the client and their counterparty are in different time zones, and the transaction involves different partner banks; therefore, if something goes unexpectedly wrong on our side or across this complex chain of events, the whole transaction can fail for our customer. The tolerance for error in our job is extremely low, because the consequences can be significant and very expensive,” explains Giedre.

According to Giedre, this is a high-paced job that requires deep knowledge of the field, which is why Danske Bank invests in supporting employees to develop their skills and helps them to acquire the necessary certificates. 

“When looking for new colleagues, we take into account their educational background – our team usually hires specialists with a degree in economics, finance, math or a similar field. However, not all the positions that we offer require university degree. We often train our specialists ourselves and help them to acquire the necessary skills. We also pay a lot of attention to soft skills – the ability to work in a team, react quickly, be flexible and able to easily adapt to a new environment, which are crucial in our dynamic workplace,” says Giedre.

Currently, the LC&I services area is looking to expand and is inviting specialists in fixed income settlement, equity settlement, static data management and other fields to join respective teams. These new colleagues are expected to be experienced professionals in their field, who have knowledge of finance and the financial markets, and are able to work with settlement systems, data sources and databases. Are you considering a change in your career and would like to join Danske Bank? Find more information here!