Senior Investment Operations Analyst – Middle Office

Senior Investment Operations Analyst – Middle Office

Requirements

• BS/BA degree in Finance, Business or related field
• 5+ years of relevant experience
• Fundamental understanding of investment products and securities operations
• Experience with technology, including Excel, Investment, Accounting, or Performance Measurement systems required
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities
• Proactive ownership of issues; willingness to recommend solutions and ownership of resolution processes
• Strong customer service focus to provide excellent support to internal and external clients
• Broad understanding of securities processing and settlement practices across Fixed Income and Equity asset management
• Exceptional analytical skills combined with detail orientation. Able to meet high expectations for precision and accuracy.

Responsibilities

• Reconcile issuer-level data between systems to ensure consistency across the investment management platform
• Respond to operational client inquiries by leveraging data contained in HIMCO systems and liaising with other Business Operations departments to provide timely resolution of client requests
• Support a mix of daily production work, ad-hoc projects, and research as requested by Business Operations Management, Insurance Portfolio Management, Accounting teams, and other constituencies
• Provide timely support to many internal HIMCO teams, including Portfolio Managers, Investment Sectors, Financial Reporting, Performance Measurement, and Client Reporting Teams
• Process and maintain investment activity in the Trading and Accounting systems for Public Fixed Income, Equity, Alternative Assets and Derivatives in HIMCO’s client portfolios
• Daily activities could include Trade Confirmation and Settlement, Cash Publishing and Reconciliation, Asset Reconciliation, Security Master Maintenance, Corporate Action Processing, Derivative Payment Processing and Collateral Management, State Deposit Processing, or other investment support activities
• Perform detailed analyses of financial payment and settlement information to resolve complex security processing issues with trade counterparties and custodial banks
• Work with front and back offices to provide best-in-class solutions to client issues
• Maintain relationships with clients, their affiliates, vendors, custodial banks, and trading counterparties, while representing HIMCO in a professional manner at all times
• Using a continuous improvement mindset, identify automation opportunities and recommend tools to enhance the client experience and fully utilize HIMCO system capabilities working with software vendors and custodians.
• Develop and maintain detailed procedures and evidence of process controls to cross-train peers, support requests from auditors, and fulfil mandated testing of controls in a highly regulated industry
• Prepare detailed reporting on key performance indicators such as trade settlement failures, asset reconciliation breaks, late trade notifications, variances between projected and actual cash payments, overdrawn cash balances, and asset variances between market data providers to inform senior management decisioning
• Participate in ad-hoc projects within Business Operations as needed, including regulatory or client-initiated changes or the testing and implementation support of IT development releases
• Identify and track exceptions in a timely manner following established market specific guidelines
• Daily activities could include publishing and reconciling investment accounts for Portfolio Managers, calculating expected interest and principal payments, performing detailed research on missing or late security payments, working with loan servicers or lending agents on payment details for Commercial Mortgage Loans or Bank Loans, tracking and moving investment income between appropriate entities and supporting external client Accounting Agents and other parties on understanding HIMCO investment cash flows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree preferred
• Experience with Bloomberg for Public Asset research for reporting and analytics
• Familiarity with Aladdin, Maximis or Singularity a plus
• Prior support of Derivatives or Alternative Asset Sectors, such as Commercial Mortgage Loans, Private Equity, Private Direct Lending, Private Placement Debt is a plus
• Experience with DTCC Trade Suite products, CTM, MarkitWire, TriOptima, Wall Street Office or Power BI a plus