Asset Servicing Analyst

Accounting Finance

Job Description

Pension Insurance Corporation (“PIC”) provides secure retirement incomes through comprehensive risk management and excellence in asset and liability management, as well as exceptional customer service. Our purpose is to pay the pensions of our current and future policyholders. We achieve our purpose by setting Companywide strategic objectives and driving a healthy culture based on our PIC Values of Resilient, Adaptable, and Loyal.

PIC is recruiting for an Asset Servicing Analyst to join its Investment Operations function. Asset Servicing is a Middle and Back-office function, supporting multiple Portfolio Management and Trading teams who invest into Fixed Income, Private Equity / Private Credit products and Private debt structured assets; in this role you will be responsible for ensuring IBOR records are up to date and aligned as per expectation allowing front office to make investment decisions based on timely and accurate IBOR data. (publishing cash), and managing and supporting internal stakeholder teams, including Front Office teams on any trade, asset position or cash related issues, and Finance and Accounting on trade, positions and cash flow issues. You will also manage and support external providers i.e. Custodians, Fund Accounting and External Investment Managers.

Your main areas of responsibility include:

Cash Reconciliation and Payments

  • Utilising Aladdin platform for cashflow / payment bookings, cash forecasting, reconciliation to custody and Fund Accounting.
  • Aim to keep a perpetually accurate cash record within the IBOR.
  • Liaise with:
  1. Asset Operations for any breaks on the manual postings related to: Pension Operations Policy Holder Payments, PIC Finance Payments, Investment deal cash flows.
  2. Work with Asset Operations for any automated breaks related to failing trades, delayed settlements and CSDR fines.
  3. Derivative Operations for any OTC related breaks, delayed settlements, and collateral movement failures. Also, on coupon / Bond maturity and Corp Action events Cash reclaims from collateral Brokers
  4. Global custodians to understand the transactions from their perspective.

Position Management

  • Utilising Aladdin platform system to compare and reconcile custody postings & Fund Accounting balances against IBOR postings
  • Aim to keep a perpetually accurate positions record within the IBOR
  • Liaise with:
  1. Asset Operations for any position differences on Fixed Income, Private Equity / Private Credit products and Private debt structured assets
  2. Derivative Operations for any position differences on OTC Derivatives, REPO and FX products.
  • Compare Custody and Fund Accounting Records and investigate any trade flow problems issues and liaise with any internal parties.
  • Manage internal transfer process where assets are required to be transferred between accounts

Income Servicing

  • Reconcile holdings to payout schedules to ensure calculations are correct
  • Working with Derivative Operations to track Income Payments and receipts for any collateral related postings or receipts
  • Track Income on PIC Capital deals and Private debt structured assets. Ensure that these are received in from the Borrowers / Loan Agents and aligned to IBOR (Models)

Corporate Actions

  • Monitor Corporate Action notifications received in from 3rd party vendors and custodians
  • Ensure accurate and timely creation of gold copy event within Aladdin
  • Work with global custodians to understand any event nuances
  • Notify and support front office to ensure elections are made on time
  • Oversight and management of the election instruction ensuring acknowledgement and confirmation
  • Reconcile holdings to payout schedules to ensure positions and cash remain correct
  • Ensuring Corporate Action elections are accurately reflected in a timely in IBOR, Fund accounting and custody data sources

Specific accountabilities assigned to the role of Asset Servicing Analyst within the broader Investment Operations function:

  • Works with our market counterparties and outsourced providers to deepen and broaden relationships to help position PIC as a good counterparty that is thoughtful, responsive, and fair. Looks to understand market best practices and how they could be adopted within PIC
  • Daily reconciliation of cash and asset positions providing front office with up to data enabling them to make timely and accurate investment decisions
  • Timely and accurate delivery of BAU tasks such as trade & cash reconciliations
  • Timely and accurate reporting on cashflow forecasting for funding purposes
  • Timely and accurate delivery of BAU tasks such as trade & cash instructions
  • Extracting the various sources of cash and asset position balances & transactions and distilling it for internal stakeholders to inform them of trends, and their relevance to our investment operations universe
  • Monitoring of Corporate Action (Voluntary & Mandatory Events), ensuring Front office & External fund managers are electing in good time and that our elections are processed accordingly as well as correctly reflected across book and records
  • Effectively collaborates with Portfolio Managers, Traders, Investment Operations, Pension Operations, Finance, Legal, Risk and Change teams
  • Takes ownership for their own learning and development in both technical (e.g. data analysis and critical judgement) and non-technical (self-insight and relationship management) skills of Asset Servicing
  • Keeps informed of industry trends, market developments, regulatory changes

Requirements

Knowledge

  • Trade Flow and Life Cycle management of Fixed Income and Money Market Products is essential as well as strong knowledge of Settlement SSI’s
  • Cash and Treasury process management is desirable
  • Market utilities such as CTM, Swift, CLS, Bloomberg, TradeWeb, MarketAxess, Alert and Onboarding Accelerator
  • Familiar with corporate actions / corporate event processing
  • Understanding of KYC, AML and onboarding processes
  • Fundamental understanding of OTC Derivatives and Collateral Management
  • Strong Excel and Intermediate knowledge of VBA
  • Knowledge of Aladdin systems and process flows for reconciliation purposes

Experience

  • Experience on a pre and post-trade lifecycle and reconciliation in Aladdin. Covering products including, but not limited to: fixed income, real estate and structured products. Plus all associated cash movements
  • Understand SWIFT network, its application in trade lifecycle, and ability to interrogate native SWIFT messages
  • Can build relationships with key internal and external stakeholders
  • Portfolio Managers through to Custodians
  • Experience in developing themselves to high levels of expertise
  • Experience of delivering analysis that is accurate, well presented, and timely
  • Experience of working with trading, trade matching, settlement, and custody systems
  • Process improvements and continuous development

Skills

  • Self-starter with strong organisational skills
  • Strong communication skills
  • Ability to persuade and influence both directly and indirectly
  • Ability to organise work to meet deadlines
  • An ability to maintain high standards of accuracy and effectiveness in dynamic environments
  • Good working knowledge of MS Access, MS PowerPoint, MS Word, Bloomberg, and confirmation, settlement and payment systems
  • Murex MX.3 experience would be desirable but not a requirement
  • Analytical minded in understanding causes and resolution to reconciliation breaks across multiple data sources

Desirable personal attributes aligned to what success looks like in the role:

  • Intellectually curious with a willingness to learn through own research
  • Strong problem-solving skills utilising consultative questioning to challenge current norms and drive change within the business function
  • Effective communicator – structures insights into clear messages and effectively engages others within business function, as well as internal stakeholders, professional and regulatory bodies
  • Innovative thinker – positive attitude to change and a willingness to embrace new ideas and techniques to improve performance

Benefits

In addition to a competitive base salary and the opportunity to participate in our annual, performance-related bonus plan, upon joining us here at Pension Insurance Corporation, you will get access to some great benefits, including private medical insurance, 28 days' annual leave (excluding bank holidays), a generous pension scheme and much more.