Head of Investment - Marks Sattin FS

Main purpose of the role

The primary responsibility is to lead the Investment Oversight team. The candidate will establish and maintain a robust framework for the independent management of investment risks and performance across portfolios while also supporting stakeholders with timely, accurate portfolio data and reporting. Success in this role requires proactive process optimisation, leveraging technology, data management and visualisation to enhance agility and scalability within the function.

Key duties and responsibilities

• Proactively identify, assess and mitigate all investment risks.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive investment oversight framework aligned with market best practices and regulatory requirements.
• Ensure adherence to risk limits and investment guidelines.
• Foster collaboration with portfolio managers, analysts and traders to understand risk appetite, challenge portfolio construction, and deliver insightful risk and performance analysis.
• Clearly communicate key findings to support informed decision-making.
• Incorporate climate and broader ESG risks management in the investment oversight framework.
• Continuously and proactively utilise technology to reduce the use of spreadsheets, automate workflows and reporting, enabling the department to scale.
• Ensure models used by the team are validated, with key assumptions and limitations clearly communicated to relevant committees.
• Ensure accurate and timely responses to RFPs, due diligences and information requests.
• Collaborate with the business development team to support existing and new business.
• Implement automated and self-service solutions to support agile sales motions.
• Maintain robust investment valuation processes, including but not limited to oversight of fund administrators, shadow NAV control, independent pricing of instruments, valuation assessments and swing pricing implementation.
• Ensure the accuracy and timeliness of positions and portfolio data across all systems and databases.
• Ensure accurate and timely production of investment reports, including factsheets, institutional reports, committee packs and portfolio data for external platforms.
• Ensure awareness and compliance with GIPS standards, reporting and presentation requirements and best practices.
• Contribute to product development initiatives, ensuring that all investment risks, performance and reporting requirements are identified and met.
• Foster a culture of financial awareness, optimise resource allocation and drive cost saving initiatives where possible without compromising quality or strategy goals.
• Manage the team activities and performance to ensure delivery of service levels in line with SLAs, client and regulatory requirements.
• Ensure the team is appropriately skilled and high performing, promote continual development and the values and behaviours.
• Implement target culture, including D&I, in department.
• Proactively drive action to help achieve our sustainability objectives.
• Maintain understanding of regulatory requirements and best market practices.
• Own relevant policies and procedures as per Governance Framework.
• Represent the department on committees and working groups, in an open and pro-active way.

Experience, skills and knowledge

• Degree in a numerical discipline (e.g. Finance, Mathematics, Physics) preferred.
• 10 years+ experience within financial services (ideally an asset manager).
• Experience leading and developing a team.
• Direct significant experience developing relational databases and working with data management platforms (e.g. Oracle, Snowflake, AWS or the likes) for portfolio analysis.
• Direct experience scripting (e.g. SQL, Python) and using visualisation softwares (e.g. PowerBi, Tableau, Grafana) to efficiently produce analysis and reports.
• Strong technical understanding of multi-factor models (e.g. Bloomberg MAC, Axioma).
• Experience leveraging AI tools to improve scalability.
• Previous Investment risk, performance or portfolio control experience.
• Experience with and strong understanding of UCITS and AIFMD regulations.
• Liquidity risk management experience.
• Portfolio stress testing experience.
• Hands on experience of equity, fixed income and derivatives instruments.
• Experience using investment management platforms (e.g. Dimension, CRD, AIM).
• Knowledge of investment accounting principles in the context of asset management.
• Experience delivering presentations to senior management and clients.

Skills

• Relationship and stakeholder management.
• Effective team management and leadership skills.
• Ability to address issues effectively, not shying away from difficult conversations.
• Excellent communication skills - written and spoken.
• Ability to challenge constructively.
• Time management, organisation skills and multi-tasking.
• Highly numerate, good understanding of mathematical/statistical concepts.
• Programming skills.
• Data management skills.
• Strong analytical skills.
• Strong interest in Sustainability/ESG.

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