Senior Manager, Front Office (FX, Liquidity & Investment) (Bangkok-based, Relocation provided)

About Agoda

Agoda is an online travel booking platform for accommodation, flights, and more. We build and deploy cutting edge technology that connects travelers with more than 3.6 million accommodations globally. Based in Asia and part of Booking Holdings, our 6,000+ employees representing 90+ nationalities foster a work environment rich in diversity, creativity, and collaboration. We innovate through a culture of experimentation and ownership, enhancing the ability for our customers to experience the world.

Our Purpose – Bridging the World Through Travel

We believe travel allows people to enjoy, learn and experience more of the amazing world we live in. It brings individuals and cultures closer together, fostering empathy, understanding and happiness. We are a skillful, driven and diverse team from across the globe, united by a passion to make an impact. Harnessing our innovative technologies and strong partnerships, we aim to make travel easy and rewarding for everyone.

Get To Know Our Team

Agoda has taken many great strides in recent years, expanding our reach around the globe as well as our list of travel products. A critical driver to this success has been the team of Agoda Finance. We keep a steady hand on maintaining day-to-day financial operations while also keeping an eye out for future opportunities. Not only do we have the unique role of balancing risk management with continued innovation and growth, we also serve as a means of empowerment for both our team members and those within the company. Having experimentation and data analysis deeply ingrained in our culture, we provide the strategic insights Agoda’s business leaders need to push into new territories in sustainable and scalable ways. We also prioritize career development in Agoda Finance. Every function within the team has a well-defined career track with clear goals and development targets each step of the way. 

The Opportunity

The Senior Manager, Front Office (FX, Liquidity & Investment), is a managerial position with headcount responsibility on Agoda’s Treasury team and is a senior member of the Treasury Department. In this role, you will use your experience to manage dealing activities both for hedging and liquidity requirements. Your mandate will be Agoda, but you will be involved in projects which involve managing FX risk in collaboration with other brands within Booking Holdings.

You will own the full lifecycle of trading, as a small team, you will be both managing the execution as well as the operations and settlement. You will own the local FX banking relationships with our partner banks in APAC, ensuring we are always negotiating and achieving best price.

You will own and be required to work with Risk and Compliance teams to ensure policies, controls and systems are documented when our hedging activity has changed.

Agoda maintains 200+ bank accounts across 50+ entities, hedges exposure in 30+ currencies. You will manage our forward outstanding book of USD1.5bn+, trading over 6500+ deals annually, and trading a book with gross turnover of USD30bn+ . You will be held accountable for and expected to address any variances to an FX budget that could be up to USD50mn.

In This Role, You’ll Get To

• Mitigate FX, interest rate, liquidity, credit and other financial risks within our control. Minimize FX P/L impact from hedging activities thru daily review and elimination of balance sheet exposures.
• Assist Corporate Treasurer execute Booking Holding treasury initiatives requiring joint participation including Cash pooling, Intercompany loan program, FX netting, In-House-Bank, Securitization, amongst others.
• Assist FP&A to model FX forecasting and liquidity by building models and dashboards to assist senior management in their key decision making
• You will be expected to deliver material cost-saving improvements throughout the year through simple things like negotiating bank spread reductions, or more complex implementations of alternative ways of doing things
• You will be expected to have a strong technical background, and have a strong acumen to reverse engineer a process and automate it where possible
• Collaborate with Finance (e.g. Risk, Tax, Payments, Controllership etc.) and non-Finance stakeholders (e.g. Product, Legal, Compliance, Strategic Partnership etc.) to design and implement necessary FX processes and infrastructure to support new product initiatives
• Enhance Agoda’s global FX capabilities and optimize BAU operations that contain FX touch points – in accordance with industry best practices.
• Mentor and develop staff to support the daily operations of the FX team and scale team to meet organizational needs

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, Accounting, Finance, Mathematics, Engineering or related discipline; MBA or master’s degree qualification is a plus.
• 7+ years of experience in a fast-paced, large-flow, FX dealing environment across a broad range of currencies, especially Asian exotics and strong understanding of trade flows including outright, financing and hedging transactions
• Extremely confident dealing spot, forward, swaps, NDFs and vanilla options to manage balance sheet exposures
• Experience with SWIFT statements, ability to dissect MT940, MT103, MT202, MT300
• An understanding of basic investment strategies, reducing interest costs between our borrowings and lending, and deciding optimal currency structure for cash pooling.
• A strong relationship builder who is experienced managing a small team, and has a knack for communicating complex ideas to junior staff as well as to c-suite level executives
• Solid interpersonal skills - ability to lead and influence decisions within a multi-disciplined finance organization and to interact with external counterparties, such as banking partners, fintech partners and suppliers.
• A high degree of self-starter mindset, accountability, resilience and critical thinking capability is expected.
• Experience with industry-leading accounting, treasury management, and finance/banking systems and applications.

It’s Great if You Have

• Experience in the payments/fintech/crypto/traditional finance
• A good understanding of internet technologies, online travel, and payment schemes.
• Experience with settlements and operation activities, particularly automated payments via host-to-host API connectivity
• Specific experience with FIS Quantum, Bloomberg FXGO, Confluence, Tableau, Metabase, Bloomberg CMS, MISYS, JPM/CITI/HSBC banking portals
• Experience in automation utilizing tools such as Microsoft PowerAutomate
• Familiarization with coding: SQL, VBA, Google Sheets Apps Script, Java, Python

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