Kersen Stephens
Kingston,Jamaica
Summary
Risk management and data analytics professional with more than 10 years of combined leadership experience in the financial industry across the diversified fields of risk management, data analytics, statistics and finance. In my spare time, I am an avid sports enthusiast and enjoy spending time with my family.
Overview
15
15
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Manager - Analytics COE Domain
National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (NCB)
08.2020 - Current
- I am currently the Manager - Analytics COE Domain responsible for leading the EIM Credit Decisioning, Risk Modelling and Analytics team within the Office of the CEO.
- I am responsible for guiding, mentoring and supporting an agile team of young, talented and determined set of Data analysts, Machine Learning engineers, Data scientists, Data engineers, and Analytics leads in continuously adopting and embracing the NCB Owner's Mindset.
- The team has continuous oversight of the credit journey (credit prospecting, credit origination, credit disbursement and credit monitoring/collections) of both our consumer and business customers.
- The goal of the team is to design, build and deploy digital, mathematical and analytic solutions to enable the Organization to lend faster, safer and with greater customer satisfaction within the confines of our Risk Appetite.
- We are also responsible for exploring value driven use cases that assess the current risk profile and capacity of the Organization, make recommendations, and build analytic solutions to increase and maximize business value.
Quantitative Risk Manager
National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (NCB)
Kingston, Jamaica
03.2017 - 07.2020
- Lead appropriate cross-functional teams (including vendors) to drive execution of defined initiatives and provide leadership in ensuring proper business outcomes.
- Technical lead on the build out and implementation of the Bank's Digital Lending Solutions.
- Lead the credit determination process/modelling of the Banking Group's IFRS9 Provisions (ECL models) on an ongoing basis.
- Lead the development, deployment, and monitoring of the Bank's first Consumer Customer Centric Scoring Model.
- Lead the development and deployment of a hybrid (quantitative and qualitative) SME Credit Risk Scoring Model.
- Technical lead on the design, implementation, and monitoring of the Bank's automatic credit card Limit Increase strategies.
- Support the various business lines in continuously optimizing/improving time to cash, time to yes and straight through processing/decisioning for both consumer and business credit journeys (including all pre-approval and prequalified digital credit journeys).
- Guide and support team members in designing technical analytics products across the analytics spectrum (descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive) as appropriate for the respective analytics initiative.
- Ensure analytics products align with established architectures, built with quality according to standards, and integrated in business processes as appropriate.
- Provide independent review and validation of existing internal rating scorecard methodologies.
- Design and maintain a robust framework to prepare risk analytics on the credit portfolio for executive management as well as conduct complex analysis of customer behavior to identify risk attributes and define elements of credit policies and procedures that will serve to reduce credit risk and improve overall profitability.
Quantitative Management Associate Program Summer Intern
Bank of America
06.2016 - 08.2016
- Performed a series of risk reviews across Moody's core business scorecard segments.
- Analyzed and presented key analytical findings to team members and Risk Executives.
- Worked together with a team of risk interns to assess and present findings on the state of the bank's liquidity risk management to the Chief Risk Officer and Risk Management Executives.
Quantitative Risk Officer
National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited
08.2012 - 07.2015
- Developed and validated econometric models (Credit Score Cards and Credit Risk Behavioral Models) that quantified the Bank's risk i.e. credit, market, liquidity and operational risks.
- Played an integral role in the development of NCB Group's first Economic Capital framework which comprises of the calculation of Expected and Unexpected Loss for credit, market, operational and liquidity risks across the Group's various business lines.
- Collaborated with members of NCB Group's Risk Management Unit in building a Stress Testing framework to evaluate the likely impact of the impending IMF agreement on key macroeconomic variables and also quantified the impact on NCB Group's balance sheet and profitability performance.
- Assessed the performance of the Bank's first set of Statistical Predictive Credit Scoring models used in quantifying customers' risk on an ongoing basis and set provision based on probabilities of default.
- Produced risk reports (Vintage Analysis, Performance and Migration Reports, and Roll Rate Analysis) for the board and senior management on the Bank's overall risk and risk-based performance in its various portfolios.
- Evaluated credit card customers' Probability of Default by using the Behavioral Scoring Model in order to inform the Bank's Collection Strategy and also to apply credit card limit increases to eligible customers based on additional performance metrics.
- Prepared and presented the NCB Insurance Company's monthly Risk Report which includes the assessment of market, liquidity and credit risks for NCBIC's various business lines to the Bank's Risk Management Committee.
Statistics Officer
Bank of Jamaica
07.2010 - 07.2012
- Forecasted and analyzed the movement in loans (including non-performing loans) of regulated entities to detect early warning signals of stress in our banks.
- Calculated duration of assets and liabilities of regulated entities to assess their sensitivity to interest rate movements.
- Stress tested the impact of increased risk weighting for GOJ FX securities on capital levels on deposit taking entities.
- Analyzed and reported on the adequacy of capital in relation to risk assets, maturity structure of assets (mainly investments and loans), and the profile of investments of regulated entities.
- Prepared annual assessment of the financial system to submit to BOJ Board of Directors.
- Prepared monthly and quarterly reports on key prudential indicators of supervised entities.
- Monitored and reported on the prescribed liabilities, cash reserve balances, capital resources, liquidity, profitability, and solvency of commercial banks.
- Liaised with and gathered information from commercial banks to prepare weekly updates on their deposit taking and borrowing activities.
- Assessed audited financial statements regarding entities' financial condition, profitability, cash generating ability, and risk exposures and managements.
- Prepared regular and ad hoc reports for submission to the IMF, JDIC and MOF.
Education
Master's of Science (MSc) - Financial Mathematics
North Carolina State University
01.2016
Bachelor of Science (BSc) - Actuarial Science
University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
01.2010
Associate's degree - Natural Sciences
Munro College
01.2007
Skills
- Risk Management
- Statistics and Financial Modeling
- Data Analytics
Certification
- Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM), Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) - issued Jul 2024
- Ability to Execute (A2E) Lead Journey, McKinsey & Company - issued Jul 2021
- Bloomberg Market Concepts (BMC) Certification, Bloomberg L.P. - issued Dec 2015
- SAS Certified Base Programmer for SAS 9, SAS Institute Inc - issued Nov 2015
Timeline
Manager - Analytics COE Domain
National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (NCB)
08.2020 - Current
Quantitative Risk Manager
National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (NCB)
03.2017 - 07.2020
Quantitative Management Associate Program Summer Intern
Bank of America
06.2016 - 08.2016
Quantitative Risk Officer
National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited
08.2012 - 07.2015
Statistics Officer
Bank of Jamaica
07.2010 - 07.2012
Master's of Science (MSc) - Financial Mathematics
North Carolina State University
Bachelor of Science (BSc) - Actuarial Science
University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
Associate's degree - Natural Sciences
Munro College