This post is not really for you veterans out there but more for more junior readers for which there is a bit of mystery about how a bank works.

If we focus solely on the financial markets part of the bank, you have 4 big categories:

Front office: This team encompasses the traders, the quants (depending on how a bank is organized, you sometimes have FO quants effectively sitting with the traders and pure quants), sales, treasury and FO management.
Processing: This massive team (sometimes referred to as Back office) processes confirmations, accounting, payments, securities and cash nostros, …
Risk: They ensure that the risk held by Front Office is actually within limits and their job is to ensure that the bank is not too exposed. You will find here risk controllers.
IT: The role of IT is to ensure that all works as expected. They are also in charge of upgrades/migrations (with the help of the teams above).

Of course, you have some roles which actually sit in between 2 or 3 categories and within each categories you have roles which are very different. But the idea here is to draw attention that there are different needs and drivers between teams.

Murex consultants normally act as second level of support and are most often contacted by people from the IT category. It often happens that they find themselves on the front line especially on more complex or urgent issues.

At some later stage, I’ll try to detail a bit more within the different groups but if you’re impatient or got some questions, feel free to ask!