FOS Client Solutions Consultant

Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized, award-winning financial institution that has been in continuous operation since 1889.

Northern Trust is proud to provide innovative financial services and guidance to the world’s most successful individuals, families, and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service, expertise, and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Role/Department

Front Office Solutions is a new strategic business for Northern Trust that provides a holistic digital and service offering for some of the most sophisticated institutional investors across the globe, including foundations, endowments, pension funds, corporations, insurance companies, central banks and sovereign wealth funds.  

As asset owners engage in more complex, data-driven investment approaches to asset allocation, their operational needs and demands for high quality data have skyrocketed. 

Front Office Solutions provides a holistic, full-service, multi-asset solution that aims to empower in-house investment teams and support their important mission by providing a more comprehensive set of operational services and analytics including portfolio management, investment decision support, operational risk management, CRM/document management and workflow tools. 

Key Responsibilities

• Acts as a subject matter expert for alternative asset queries
• Assists in review of all other queries
• Responsible for supporting data management with respect to alternative asset transactional impacts and interpretation of complex capital account statements and transaction notices. Responsible for communicating how the data should be captured.
• Acts as point of initial review for all investment data. Includes review of (but not limited to) Alternative Investment Performance Data.
• Responsible for initial or secondary review of NAV, allocation and underlying client performance for alternative investments.
• Serves as initial or secondary reviewer of single, conventional and blended benchmark calculations; reviewer of Public Market Equivalent (PME) benchmark calculations.
• Assists in training new FOS partners in the alternative asset space.
• Acts as point of initial review for all investment data. Includes review of (but not limited to):
• Investment transactions (typically statement-based for alternative assets; file-based for public markets)
• Investment valuations (typically statement-based for alternative assets; file-based for public markets)
• Manager Estimates
• Plan Income / Expense Items
• Plan Contributions / Spending Withdrawals
• Underlying Manager Exposure Data
• Benchmark Data
• Responsible for initial or secondary review of all investment reconciliations. Includes reconciliation of cash, positions, performance, transactions, alternative investment metrics (unfunded commitment, etc.).
• Serves as initial or secondary reviewer of investment and composite performance calculations, including time weighted return and IRR calculations.
• Reviews proxy return settings at the investment level.
• Participates in initial client discovery sessions, assists in project planning, setting client expectations and facilitating continuous client updates throughout the onboarding process.
• Responsible for the review of all historic data entry and reconciliations during client onboarding.
• Participates in ongoing process improvement discussions where feasible including:
• Process improvement through technical skills development
• Third party vendor sourcing
• Ongoing Front Office Solutions program build (fee billing, legal contracts, training, etc.)

Skills/Qualifications:

• Experience working with complex asset owners including Endowments, Foundations, Family Offices, OCIOs, Pension Funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and institutional asset managers.
• Analytical skills.
• Advanced understanding of Microsoft Suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio), with particular emphasis on Excel.
• Ability to prioritize, multi-task, and perform effectively under deadlines.
• Ability to handle multiple concurrent projects and to reconcile any conflicting priorities.
• Commitment to project success as it may require working unconventional hours during critical project phases.
• Experience using VBA, Python or other programming language to format large data sets.
• Prior experience with multi-asset class portfolio management software.
• Experience in using Research Management/CRM solutions
• Experience / orientation to operational process improvement.
• Client servicing experience. High level of comfort communicating directly with clients and client advocacy.
• Ability to work closely and collaborate with internal stakeholders.

Working with Us:

As a Northern Trust partner, greater achievements await. You will be part of a flexible and collaborative work culture in an organization where financial strength and stability is an asset that emboldens us to explore new ideas.

Movement within the organization is encouraged, senior leaders are accessible, and you can take pride in working for a company committed to assisting the communities we serve! Join a workplace with a greater purpose.