Consultant, Portfolio Accounting

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 Portfolio Accounting function is primarily responsible for the daily oversight & governance of the Institutional Accounting entities. This role in partnership with practices that include Performance Measurement, Attribution, Product, and Technology will develop and execute workflow enhancements to deliver a world-class Accounting organization. It will involve both identifying, solutioning, and championing initiatives to build new capabilities such as day-over day Total Market Value recons for all products, while remaining agile in order to service competing needs of dependent product initiatives.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

Work alongside global partners to deliver a robust, low touch, operating model for supporting Institutional Client Accounting:

• Lead accounting-related external and internal initiatives to drive automation to drive economies of scale

• Identify trends within the data resulting in insufficient outcomes. Formulate solutions & write development stories to help guide Technology to develop strategic outcomes

• Act as an escalation point onshore and offshore resources to provide guidance for complex Accounting problems

• Assert completion of daily reconciliation for all global institutional entities within 2 Basis Points. Actively documents and communicates any corrective action needed to address hope items for remediation.

• Provide business testing and certification that all system capabilities are functional. Function is performed on an ad-hoc basis with tight deadlines, requiring partners to remain agile while servicing competing needs.

• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to assess current state and architect future-state operating models, processes, capabilities required to successfully support evolving business needs.

• Partner with Business Unit Manager to implement long term strategic initiatives pursuant to the growth of the team/enterprise

• Strengthen the first line of defense (1LOD) by instilling a culture of continuous improvement and robust policy and data domain documentation to reduce operational risk and drive operational excellence.

• Develop and monitor KPIs to measure operational effectiveness of Accounting teams to ensure monthly SLA’s are met.

• Motivate and guide off share partners to inhibit growth, autonomy, and build resiliency.

• Consult with product team, COO teams, technology etc. to develop scalable and modular reporting (for e.g. Sustainable Investing) for funds and separate accounts.

Necessary Knowledge and Skills:

• Detailed understanding of the investment management business, multiple asset classes and investment systems

• Knowledge of Global Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP).

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

• Experience measuring & managing competing priorities to ensure delivery of initiatives across competing deadlines

• Dynamic relationship building and partnership skills; a strong collaborator with experience partnering on initiatives amongst multiple groups and stakeholders

• Outstanding communication skills, both written and verbal, with demonstrated ability to develop materials and effectively present to and persuade executive audiences

• Global outlook with sensitivity and awareness of social and cultural differences

• Strong situational awareness and decision making capabilities

• Ability to review large data sets utilizing strong analytical capabilities to identify fact patterns within the data. Demonstrates capability to offer up solutions to drive iterative change.

Necessary Experience and Education

• Bachelor degree; Master in