Careers Piece: Pádraic Mackin – Treasury Dealer at AIB & MSc in Finance Alumnus

What inspired you to do a Masters in Finance?

It was something I always had a keen interest in, however after spending a couple of years working in the insurance sector I knew I wanted to get into a “financial markets” based role. I felt the Masters in Finance would provide me with the skillset to make that jump. The course was very comprehensive and I gained a great understanding of financial markets, derivatives, asset pricing and portfolio management.

What role did you land after the course?

On completion, I joined AIB’s graduate programme as a trainee treasury dealer. The treasury department plays a critical role in AIB, managing interest rate risk, ensuring the bank has adequate liquidity on a short & long term basis, managing FX exposure & utilising excess liquidity to generate profit by investing in bonds.

What has your journey in AIB looked like?

As part of the graduate programme, I have been able to rotate across different teams and roles including asset & liability management, short-term liquidity, working as a portfolio manager on the fixed income investment team, and more recently with the interest rate trading team. Overall, I have gained great experience and feel like I have a solid understanding of the Treasury function. I have also had the opportunity to work on people and culture working groups including Treasury Development and Treasury Fitness and Wellbeing.

Have you had any challenges to overcome or achieved any key milestones?

One of the toughest challenges initially was the number of acronyms as well as the industry lingo that is used. There is a steep learning curve in moving from the academic side to on the job experience. It took a while to get used to terms like ‘bull steepening of yield curves’ or the concept of XVA, and understanding each of the different valuation adjustments applied to derivatives. After each rotation I made a presentation to senior management in treasury. This was a great opportunity to showcase myself to management but could also be quite daunting.

I’ve recently passed the CFA L1 exam which was a great personal achievement. The Masters in Finance was an invaluable help as a lot of the material in the CFA exam overlapped with the course. The next step is to tackle the level 2 exam and progress my career further in the bank.