What are the duties of a Bank Operations officer?

Question

Can someone tell the duties (Job description) of a Bank Operations officer? Which qualification does one need to have in order to become a bank operations officer?

Answer 1

Historically, one needed a high school diploma as banking is really an apprenticed process as are all the financial services. Still, a college diploma trumps experience in banking in most cases.

There isn't a single job description for two reasons. First, small banks' operations officers perform all types of operational tasks. In a one branch bank the operations officer's job description is basically "responsible for everything except sales."

In a large bank, there the role of an operations officer is specialized to the operations support area they manage. There would be a variety of deposit operations officers quite possibly including back room operations such as proof and reconcilement to very specific areas such as credit card operations, demand deposit operations, treasury operations, reserve maintenance, teller operations, and compliance to name a few possible divisions. Also on the liability side of the bank you have trust operations, brokerage operations, insurance operations and possibly compliance operations and quality assurance. Banking is a manufacturing operation disguised as a service industry.

On the asset side, you may have a variety of loan operations and possibly investment operations for the bank's account. Loan operations may be split up into mortgage operations, operations to support participations, commercial loan support, indirect lending support, consumer lending support and collections support.

To be an operations officer, have a good undergraduate business degree in accounting, management, banking or possibly economics. Analytical skills are essential and people skills are paramount. You have to be able to talk to a screaming customer about how you are going to harm their future because your contract says you must and you then need to convince them not only to like your bank, but you want to sell them more products as you destroy their life for them. You need to stand up to a senior officer who has already promised a customer to do something outside their authority and make it fit regulatory, policy and legal boundaries. It may be you, as bad cop that does that. You may have to make deals that shouldn't work work. You may be responsible for crafting deals that would be outside the boundaries to deals inside the boundaries. So it can call for a peculiar person. One who is rules and regulations oriented, detail oriented and can drop all of that to make the sales side of the institution work by being creative and by being focused on the customer, given the profit needs of the shareholders.

Analytics, people, personal strength and integrity and education.

Answer 2

Mortgage Operations Manager Job Description