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Summary of Role

We have an exciting opportunity for an Investment Operations professional to join our Financial Operations department and play a critical role in enhancing our unit pricing, investment accounting and operational capability and control environment. The role will require someone who is able to work independently with a continuous improvement mindset; able to draw on professional experience to recommend best practice process improvements with the technical ability to implement and deliver on those recommendations. The individual should be comfortable operating in a complex and time pressured environment; able to problem solve effectively under pressure and deliver to project deadlines.

The role will report into the Head of Financial Operations and will support the Investment Operations Senior Analyst with daily investment operations process including; appropriations (new money allocation), trade placement, treasury (fund settlement), unit pricing and valuation and the accompanying reconciliations that form the control environment as well as closing the ledger and assuming ownership for monthly and quarterly reporting.

In addition, the role will assume responsibility for a change portfolio of process enhancements and increased capability e.g. leading on an investment system upgrade, strengthening existing controls and building out end to end reconciliations. The role will assume responsibility for all investment accounting and reporting tasks and the role holder will be expected to be a subject matter expert on accounting for unit-linked funds and retail investment products.

Flexible working: 2/3 days in the office, 3/2 working from home.

Key Responsibilities & Duties

• Support the team by being able to independently operate the daily investment operations processes, namely: appropriations, treasury, trade placement, unit pricing and fund valuation.
• Act as the senior professional in the team, reviewing all inputs into the ledger originating from investment and treasury systems, signing off reconciliations and enhancing and developing, through organic process design, a robust and effective control environment.
• Enhance strategic capability within the Investment Operations area through the delivery of a significant process improvement and change portfolio including a system upgrade; delivering a catalogue of identified best practice procedural improvements and enhancing controls and operational processes such as fund tax, fund rebates and box management.
• Assume responsibility for all investment accounting and reporting tasks, acting as a subject matter expert for the accounting of unit-linked funds and retail investment products.
• Take a lead in internal projects such as deep dives into asset liability matching reconciliations, shareholder and policyholder dual accounting intrafund and intercompany positions and reviewing rebate arrangements on managed portfolios.
• Deliver organic idea generation, actionable management insights and best practice recommendations as pertains to all things Investment Operations and Treasury exploring automation; API’s, SFTP integrations and onboarding of systems to reduce and eliminate dependency on manual processes.
• Support key stakeholders in the wider business to understand and interpret financial results, management information and contribute to regulatory reporting outputs e.g. Solvency II reporting.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential:

• Significant experience in an investment accounting and reporting function; familiarity with unit linked funds and retail investment products.
• Experience of working in a unit pricing environment for a life insurer or professional services provider including hands-on systems experience with an Investment System (e.g. InvestPro, pControl, HiPortfolio).
• Strong reconciliation experience including; control account reconciliations, trade and settlement reconciliations, variance analysis and root cause analysis.
• A good understanding and appreciation of financial and operational controls with experience of designing, implementing and operating controls on an ongoing basis and building and maintain robust control frameworks.

Desirable:

• Passionate about process improvement and the utilisation of technology and tools to automate and improve processes e.g. AI, Python.
• Good understanding of the key participants in the trade and pricing lifecycle for unit linked funds including; transfer agents, custodians, fund managers, price disseminators, dealing platforms and Investment systems.
• Good working knowledge of the post trade operating environment including; corporate actions, asset servicing, cash settlement reconciliations and fund accounting and reporting.
• Experience of sourcing prices from Bloomberg and/ or valuing portfolios of baskets of derivative instruments.
• Experience of preparing management information for governance and oversight forums e.g. tracking error, adhered to strategic asset allocation, KRIs and performance monitoring.
• Familiarity with the ABI’s Guide to Best Practice for Unit Linked Funds
• Familiarity with unit pricing concepts including hierarchical pricing, box

Desirable

• Experience of Bloomberg
• Experience of Invest Pro
• Recognised accountancy qualification
• Experience of Sun general ledger

Foresters Financial is not your typical financial services provider. Those who join our purpose-driven organisation enjoy a culture of collaboration, creativity, and mutual respect and are challenged to do their best to make a difference every day. We help everyday families achieve their financial goals and make a lasting difference in their lives and communities.