Our Institutional Strategy and Analytics (S&A) team is a front office client facing group of professionals within asset management who have varied backgrounds in asset allocation, asset liability management (ALM), consulting, and actuarial science. We provide asset allocation, capital management, risk management and other advisory services to institutional clients and prospects on a global basis. We work closely with all investment teams across JP Morgan Asset Management as well as with our institutional salesforce.
We are looking to hire an executive director in London as head of pension strategy in EMEA. The role is ideal for a candidate who has a background in the broad range of investments made by pension fund investors, a strong understanding of the UK and European pensions landscape and regulation, strong quantitative modeling skills with sufficient programming experience to direct junior team members on projects and review their implementation, and the industry specific constraints that institutional investors face. The role would involve substantial client interaction.
You will work with UK and European pension funds to help them make asset allocation decisions that achieve their specific objectives. We have a strong investment platform covering fixed income, equity and alternatives and you would be expected to deliver strategy and analytical insights to support the full spectrum of our investment capabilities for pension fund investors.
Job responsibilities:
- Development of new analytical capabilities – Design analytical capabilities that will enhance our competiveness and reach to clients in the UK/European pensions market, use various data sets to generate sales insights and build mass customizable analytics for clients, and develop other capabilities as needed.
- Completion of client advisory assignments – Analysis for clients, including initial scoping and interaction with clients, completing analysis to meet their needs, presentation of results, and incorporation of revisions/extensions as needed.
- Development of intellectual capital – Help produce high quality research/analysis in response to industry developments.
Required qualifications, capabilities and skills:
- Ability to articulate complex investment strategies/processes in a clear and concise manner and comfort in interacting with clients during meetings and over the phone.
The existing team has a varied skillset and ultimately the duties of this rule will depend on the qualifications of candidates that we find. Ideally the successful candidate will excel in all three of the following areas, but any candidate considered must excel in at least two of the following:
- Investment management – Understanding of all major asset classes that UK/European institutional investors (especially pension funds) invest in, including expected return, market risk, credit risk, structure, liquidity, cash flow characteristics, diversification benefits, etc. This includes public and private assets. Strong understanding of LDI required although this is not the primary product offering.
- Industry knowledge – Expert understanding of factors that constrain pension funds including liabilities, accounting, risk appetite, funding level, etc. The primary focus is the UK and European pension market, but pension background in the Middle East and South Africa is helpful.
- Communication – strong verbal and written communication skills and extensive work experience preparing high quality presentation materials for clients
- Pension background – Expert understanding of pension financial reporting/regulatory funding requirements in UK and Europe. Understanding of actuarial principles of pension scheme valuation for defined benefit and defined contribution scheme design.
- Quantitative analysis and software engineering – Deep knowledge of quantitative analysis techniques used for investment management and risk management. Also the ability to oversee the development of production quality code in Python including the specification of modelling requirements.
Preferred qualifications, capabilities and skills:
- Experience with object oriented programming and sound software engineering practices
- Ability to apply basic investment management concepts, such as efficient frontiers, passive vs active management, VaR, factor investing, etc
- Experience of linear and non-linear optimization (including the formulation of problems, development of constraints, and use of software to solve these problems, especially mixed integer optimization problems), advanced statistical methods, econometrics, and stochastic processes.