Director, Investment Operations

About Northern Trust:

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 Summary

Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) is a trillion dollar investment management firm entrusted by investors around the globe to help them navigate changing market environments, so they can confidently realize their long-term objectives.

The Director of Investment Operations, reporting into the Global Head of Investment Operations, is primarily responsible for championing the strategy and overseeing daily operations of core operational functions and related activities for NTAM. This role, in partnership with practices that include Product, Marketing, COO, Investments, Data Office and Technology, will support the execution of the strategic roadmap and maintain a world-class organization to manage all books of record (IBOR, ABOR and PBOR),  to ensure accurate representation of positions, transactions and cash, across Eagle, Aladdin, Archer and Gresham, via daily reconciliation and accounting, including responsibility for all Corporate Actions processing and other operational functions. Furthermore this role will be responsible for the operational support of the OCIO function. This will involve building first class relationships with internal and external custodians, transfer agents and fund accountants, technology vendors, as well as digital and people leadership required to achieve scale.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

Lead an and drive excellence across this practice. Responsibilities include:

• Lead Core Investment Operations functions, e.g. onboarding, reconciliation, reporting, corporate actions and others across NTAM clients, accounts and funds.

• Oversee the operational support of the OCIO business via a dedicated operational team.

• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to assess current state and architect future-state operating models, processes, capabilities required to successfully support evolving business needs to drive excellence. Communicate roadmap in terms meaningful to both business and technology organizations.

• Develop service levels with the business, establish a robust governance and control framework to ensure delivery of timely and accurate information, and monitor on-going effectiveness

• Lead NTAM’s vendor relationship with Fund accountants for NT Mutual Funds, CITs, UCITS and ETFs and other external custodians, transfer agents and fund accountants.

• Lead initiatives to strengthen the first line of defense (1LOD) by instilling a culture of continuous improvement and robust policy and procedure documentation and process to reduce operational risk and drive operational excellence.

• Lead, participate and oversee existing and emerging proprietary or vended applications and data used for reconciliation and cash reporting, providing thought leadership on effective use of spend.

• Develop and monitor KPIs to measure effectiveness of portfolio administration and ensure value delivery.

• Hire, motivate and manage talent to retain, grow, build bench strength and resiliency.

Necessary Knowledge and Skills

• Detailed understanding of the investment management business, multiple asset classes and investment/financial technology systems within a large scale Asset Management setting

• Experience managing and developing teams of on-shore and offshore resources with excellent motivation and team building skills, including the ability to recruit, develop and retain staff

• Knowledge of investment operations, OCIO, cash processes, reconciliation, analytics, strategy development, influencing, facilitation and consensus building

• Prior experience in integrating and influencing others across a network, and unlocking new opportunities to drive excellence in Operations

• Dynamic relationship building and partnership skills; a strong collaborator with experience leading initiatives across multiple groups and stakeholders

• Strong negotiation and vendor management experience

• Outstanding communication skills, both written and verba