Melissa Sanchez

Born in Lima (Peru) as the middle of three sisters, Melissa Sanchez (45) moved to The Netherlands 10 years ago. She finished her bachelor in Business Management at Hogeschool Utrecht, has two daughters and lives with her family in Nieuwerkerk aan den Ijssel. In January 2023, she celebrated her 5 year anniversary at Northpool.

Before I came to The Netherlands, I finished my university degree Accountancy in Peru. After working for 1,5 years, I got my Public Accountant registration in Lima. The working conditions were bad; in Peru people have very long workdays and the payments in Peru are very low. I had the opportunity to come to The Netherlands and apply for a student visa. As a Non-European foreigner, the costs to study in The Netherlands are very high. After one year, I applied for a scholarship and got it. After finishing my bachelor’s degree in business management, I was looking for a job. This was very difficult, since Ionly had a study visa. With a study visa you can only work 8 hours per week. To gain experience, I did internships at different international companies. Coming to the Netherlands from Peru was pretty easy, on the other hand the first years in The Netherlands were extremely difficult. It’s like jumping in the pool and not knowing how to swim, you have no idea what’s going to happen. But I learned not to think in the barriers, in the problems, but in the possibilities.

I was looking for a job in an international environment and applied for different positions, all related to finance. Via a recruitment agency in Amsterdam, I found Northpool. I had a first interview and got the job. After working at Northpool for six months, I decided to fully enter the company under a permanent contract.

A lot of things have changed in the past 5 years. It was a roller coaster. In the beginning, there was no Backoffice department and the accountancy part was outsourced. Every process had to be set up from scratch. We started to organize the work ourselves, constantly thinking how to improve. What I like te most about this, is the ‘changing for better’: we made the business grow.

At Northpool, I’m in the process of continuous learning. My job is not like a ‘normal’ finance or accounting job. We have to be aware of specific regulations. It’s a totally different company than what I have ever seen before. If it wouldn’t be like that, I wouldn’t be here. It wasn’t my destiny to stay in Peru. I need the constant change and constant learning.

I work three days a week. I feel accountable for my work, and I will do everything to finish it. Within our team, we complete the work within a certain degree of freedom, especially since we all have small children. The company trusts me to finish my work and be flexible; a privilege that I really appreciate.

It’s a fun company to work for, you can really be yourself. Everyone is very friendly and approachable; there is no such thing like formality. At Northpool, they look at your personal work and effort. Here you have an environment that is very collegial, everybody is nice and helpful. Somehow, they make a good selection; everybody has kind of like the same spirit. You can really be the way you are, yourself. There is no hierarchy, my colleagues are very easy accessible, even as it comes to the ones in management positions. Even with the enormous growth of the past months, this hasn’t changed. Due to the growth of the company this may become more formal in the future, but ‘m not afraid that the environment will change.

The first thing I do is the cash balance, every Monday morning. We have to make sure there is enough money in the different trading platforms to trade, but also to make payments. Everybody in the Backoffice needs to have it clear. Every Monday morning, we have a Backoffice meeting. In this meeting we discuss what we have done last week, the progress of different subjects and what is urgent for this week. We also talk about what do we need from the rest of the team, or from someone within the company. We try to inform each other about what we are doing. It’s a very small team; sometimes we are taking care of things that the other team member is not aware of, we share this in our meetings.

We are a data driven company, so we need to do a lot of conciliation of the information we get and the data we have in our reports. We don’t have a lot of counterparties, but the data we manage is very large. We must comply with EU regulations related to trading. I also do EMIR and REMT reporting daily, the team supports each other on this task. We must report daily cash balances and weekly cash planning. We need to make sure that our collaterals are enough and cash requirements are sufficient for trading. Besides this, I'm responsible of the accounting bookings, trading invoices and operational expenses, as well as the weekly payments. Since it is a very dynamic business, our daily tasks and responsibilities are different every day, not one day is the same.

At this moment, I’m working towards a senior position. Also, after summer, I want to start studying again. I’m still thinking about what I want to do; finish my master degree or follow different courses that I can directly apply in my work. I want to learn constantly and I like to do my job as good as I can.