Head of Consulting

Mission

The Global Head of Consultant Relations plays a crucial role, bridging the gap between consultants' expectation and the company. Frequently interacting with top management, sales, and investment teams, this position promotes the businesses culture and expertise to foster business with consultants. It also allows the business to continually assess that its investment proposition is competitive and fit for purpose.

The role holder’s core objectives are:

Coverage of Consultants

• Ensure appropriate coverage of the entire consultant ecosystem worldwide, including the research departments, field consultants, senior management. This includes directly: o Global Consultants: Cambridge Associates, Aon, Mercer, Russell Investments, Willis Towers Watson, BFinance and Morningstar;
• Local Consultants in the UK and Ireland. (Other consultants elsewhere are covered by the local Sales teams and The Global Head of Consultant Relations is responsible for adequate coordination)
• Proactively encourage, advise and support the organisation’s local Sales teams in their coverage of local consulting firms in their markets, maintenance and strengthening of relations with local “client consulting” offices of Global Consulting firms
• Organise regular calls, to update local sales force teams on developments with consultants including ratings, pitches, flows, and general intelligence on consultants’ activity.
• Ensure consistency of approach across the firm
• Coordinate with the US-based consultants’ relations team o With the forthcoming Victory Capital transaction, this will morph into a regular coordination with the sales team of VC on coverage of Global consultants, and mutual assistance on local consultants, and import/ export activities
• Define, with the various sales force teams, Institutional and Wealth and Distribution, a general approach to consultants
• Understand and map Consultants’ organisation and maintain regular relations with relevant researchers; arrange events where appropriate
• Arrange research meetings with relevant investment teams. Prepare the meetings o Presentations, where necessary, help investment teams with the articulation of the investment process
• Briefs and rehearsals with the investment teams
• Ensure that follow ups are covered
• Coordinate follow ups on research meetings

Identify and promote strategies with the objective of having them rated by consultants and generating additional business.

• Determine, together with the Consultant team members, the strategies to be presented. The strategies should be selected based on: o An analysis of the credibility of the strategies in terms of team, investment philosophy and process and performance
• Demand from consultants
• Input from sales teams
• Proactively contribute to the conception, design and promotion of new products, in partnership with the marketing teams, generalist sales teams and respective product line teams e.g. Portfolio Managers, Product Specialists and Risk
• Seek input from Consultants on prospective/new products, to ensure relevant specification and buy-in from Consultants
• For all RFPs received from consultants under the GCR team’s direct responsibility, run the full Sales process from RFP until finals presentation, in close coordination with the relevant sales team
• Formalization of the Consultant Sales Action Plan activity once a year. – Maintain record of Assets under Management and deal-flow either led or influenced by Consultants

Share Best Practices

• Stay on top of any evolution of trends in consultants’ activities
• Ensure that the consultant activity is fully promoted to senior management
• Obtain and disseminate feedback after research meetings. o Ensure that senior management is kept informed of major consultant feedbacks.
• Where necessary, help adjust the investment proposition and its articulation.
• Identify thought leadership topics and work with Consultants team to promote the firms research
• Report progress/activity as necessary to various management bodies, in particular produce twice a year a document describing Key Performance Indicators for the team, including the meetings and ratings activity, the inflows and revenues attached, and the thought leadership activity.

Management

• The Global Head of Consultant Relations manages directly a team of 4 individuals. We expect him/her to:
• Ensure a good communication / exchange of ideas within the team;
• Encourage seamless communication between the team and the rest of the organisation
• Provide the medium to long-term direction of the company to the team while managing the short-term priorities
• Provide guidance and leadership where required. This includes undertaking performance reviews