Segregation of Duties on a Small Trading Desk
When a branch has eight people covering trade entry, confirmations, and settlements, pure segregation feels impossible. Here is how Taipei desks usually draw practical lines.
Small trading offices in Taipei often run with overlapping hats. The same clerk who books a ticket may also chase a broker confirmation later that afternoon. Regulators and internal auditors still expect clear separation between initiating a trade, confirming it, and releasing settlement instructions.
Start by listing every person who can create, amend, or cancel a trade ticket. Then list who can approve cash movements and who can change static data such as counterparty bank details. Even in a lean branch, those three lists should not be identical.
Where headcount forces dual roles, use compensating controls: a daily blotter review by someone outside the booking chain, dual sign-off on new counterparty bank instructions, and a locked change log for static data. Document the exception so an auditor sees intention rather than accident.
We routinely find that desks already perform informal reviews at close of day. Writing those reviews into a signed checklist — with the reviewer’s name and time — turns habit into evidence without adding a new system or tool.
If your branch is about to hire, use the vacancy to restore a cleaner split rather than adding another all-purpose assistant. A single hire placed carefully on confirmations or settlements often removes more risk than a generalist floater.
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